“And is pleasure good or bad?”
“Sometimes the one, sometimes the other.”
“In itself?”
“I should say so.”
“I should not.”
“Are you not, then, by your very profession, more or less an enemy of pleasure?”
“On the contrary, I believe that pleasure is good, and does good, and urges to good. CARE is the evil thing.”
“Strange doctrine for a clergyman.”
“Now, do not misunderstand me, Mr Stoddart. That might not hurt you, but it would distress me. Pleasure, obtained by wrong, is poison and horror. But it is not the pleasure that hurts, it is the wrong that is in it that hurts; the pleasure hurts only as it leads to more wrong. I almost think myself, that if you could make everybody happy, half the evil would vanish from the earth.”
“But you believe in God?”