“If you were any different, you wouldn’t be what you are.” But could I fault him in his thinking? Had I not thought much the same of myself, a hundred hundred times? Do we not all think this way sometimes—whatever our condition—and in a sense is it not true? Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men. Even me.
