_The Offensive Stranger_: And so you shall praise men for their good intentions, and not blame them for the evils resulting; you shall blame men for their evil intentions, and not praise them for the good resulting. _The Dervish_: O maniac! will you say---- _The Offensive Stranger_: Listen to the law: From _every_ impulse, whether good or evil, flow two streams; the one carries health, the other carries poison. From the beginning of time this law has not changed, to the end of time it will not change. _The Dervish_: If I should strike thee dead in anger---- _The Offensive Stranger_: Or kill me with a drug which you hoped would give me new life and strength---- _The Dervish_: Very well. Go on. _The Offensive Stranger_: In either case the results would be the same. Age-long misery of mind for you--an evil result; peace, repose, the end of sorrow for me--a good result. Three hearts that hold me dear would break; three pauper cousins of the third removed would get my riches and rejoice; you would go to prison and your friends would grieve, but your humble apprentice-priest would step into your shoes and your fat sleek life and be happy. And are these all the goods and all the evils that would flow from the well-intended or ill-intended act that cut short my life, O thoughtless one, O purblind creature? The good and evil results that flow from _any_ act, even the smallest, breed on and on, century after century, forever and ever and ever, creeping by inches around the globe, affecting all its coming and going populations until the end of time, until the final cataclysm! _The Dervish_: Then, there being no such thing as a good deed---- _The Offensive Stranger_: Don’t I tell you there are good _intentions_, and evil ones, and there an end? The _results_ are not foreseeable. They are of both kinds, in all cases. It is the law. Listen: this is far-Western history: VOICES OUT OF UTAH I _The White Chief_ (_to his people_): This wide plain was a desert. By our Heaven-blest industry we have damned the river and utilized its waters and turned the desert into smiling fields whose fruitage makes prosperous and happy a thousand homes where poverty and hunger dwelt before. How noble, how beneficent, is Civilization! II _Indian Chief_ (_to his people_): This wide plain, which the Spanish priests taught our fathers to irrigate, was a smiling field, whose fruitage made our homes prosperous and happy. The white American has damned our river, taken away our water for his own valley, and turned our field into a desert; wherefore we starve. _The Dervish_: I perceive that the good intention did really bring both good and evil results in equal measure. But a single case cannot prove the rule. Try again.