No one should attempt to read what I shall write unless they understand a principle which alone could justify what may seem like a justification of Communism. I think I first realised the principle when discussing Henry VIII with Protestants whom Froude’s glorification of Henry had infected. The Froude-infected mind proclaims the great good that came of Henry’s policy; as if the increased fertility of the infant burial place at Bethlehem justified Herod in slaughtering the Innocents. On hearing this mode of arguing I did not refuse to grant, for the sake of argument, that some or even that much good had come of Henry’s thefts and murders; but I refused to grant that Henry’s policy was a good policy because good came of it; or even that Henry was either a great or good man because great good had come of his way of acting.

The abstract principle which Henry VIII’s legal thefts and murders made me see and accept was this: A man, a programme, a policy is not good merely because good comes of it; especially if the good that comes of it has come by the operation of a good-will. Just as there is nothing so good that a bad will cannot turn it to bad, so there is nothing so bad that a good will cannot turn to good.