It seems to some people almost a paradox to assert that immorality should not be encountered by physical force. The same people would willingly admit that it is hopeless to rout a modern army with bows and arrows, even with the support of a fanfare of trumpets. Yet that metaphor, as we have seen, altogether fails to represent the inadequacy of law in the face of immorality. We are concerned with a method of fighting which is not merely inadequate, but, as has been demonstrated many times during the last two thousand years, actually fortifies and even dignifies the foe it professes to attack. But the failure of physical force to suppress the spiritual evil of immorality by no means indicates that a like failure would attend the more rational tactics of opposing a spiritual force by spiritual force. The virility of our morals is not proved by any weak attempt to call in the aid of the secular arm of law or the ecclesiastical arm of theology. If a morality cannot by its own proper virtue hold its opposing immorality in check then there is something wrong with that morality. It runs the risk of encountering a fresh and more vigorous movement of morality. Men begin to think that, if not the whole truth, there is yet a real element of truth in the assertion of Nietzsche: "We believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger in the street and in the heart, secrecy,
stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind, everything wicked, tyrannical, predatory and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite." 30 To ignore altogether the affirmation of that opposing morality, it may be, would be to breed a race of weaklings, fatally doomed to succumb helplessly to the first breath of temptation.