Another form of simple duty. When damage is done, who should repair it? He who did it. This is just, but it is only theory, and the consequence of following the theory would be the evil in force until the malefactors were found and had offset it. But suppose they are not found? or suppose they can not or will not make amends?
The rain falls on your head through a hole in the roof, or the wind blows in at a broken window. Will you wait to find the man who caused the mischief? You would certainly think that absurd. And yet such is often the practice. Children indignantly protest, "I didn't put it there, and I shall not take it away!" And most men reason after the same fashion. It is logic. But it is not the kind of logic that makes the world move forward.
On the contrary, what we must learn, and what life repeats to us daily, is that the injury done by one must be repaired by another. One tears down, another builds up; one defaces, another restores; one stirs up quarrels, another appeases them; one makes tears to flow, another wipes them away; one lives for evil-doing, another dies for the right. And in the workings of this grievous law lies salvation. This also is logic, but a logic of facts which makes the logic of theories pale. The conclusion of the matter is not doubtful; a single-hearted man draws it thus: given the evil, the great thing is to make it good, and to set about it on the spot; well indeed if Messrs. the Malefactors will contribute to the reparation; but experience warns us not to count too much on their aid.
But however simple duty may be, there is still need of strength to do it. In what does this strength consist, or where is it found? One could scarcely tire of asking. Duty is for man an enemy and an intruder, so long as it appears as an appeal from without. When it comes in through the door, he leaves by the window; when it blocks up the windows, he escapes by the roof. The more plainly we see it coming, the more surely we flee. It is like those police, representatives of public order and official justice, whom an adroit thief succeeds in evading. Alas! the officer, though he finally collar the thief, can only conduct him to the station, not along the right road. Before man is able to accomplish his duty, he must fall into the hands of another power than that which says, "Do this, do that; shun this, shun that, or else beware!"