The Virtue of Mercy

The Virtue of Mercy

1986 9 September 5 The Virtue of Mercy (383) The famous hunter, Jim Corbett, was particularly interested in shooting tigers. To justify this cruel act, he had an explanation all ready: “I hunt tigers to protect my townsmen from man-eaters.” Most hunters find some justification or the other for the cruelty of their acts. But some, like Colonel Jaipal, whose memoirs, “The Great Hunt”, were published by Carlton Press, New York in 1982, see no need to justify themselves.

Colonel Jaipal freely admits what others fight shy of. He makes no bones about the fact that killing crocodiles gave him an intense pleasure. He would creep up on these creatures, fire at them and watch exultantly as they fled into the water where they writhed in pain, beating their tails grotesquely, and jaws agape, gasped for breath. All this gave him “quite a lot of thrills.”

It is all very well to say that it is part of human nature to lie in ambush for the unwary, to plot the downfall of others and to exult in one’s successes. But there is surely a better side to human nature which should be encouraged to get the upper hand of what is base and bestial in man. It is a question of recognizing this as something desirable and willing himself, by God’s grace, to tread the straight and narrow path of virtue, to suppress in himself whatever is base and evil and to show mercy to all of God’s living creatures. It is only if he can root out the evils of callousness and cruelty that he will prove himself of entering the gates of paradise.

William Shakespeare’s lines on the subject of mercy are immortal:

The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest. It blesseth him that gives and him that take. ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein both sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; An earthly power does then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. (The Merchant of Venice.)