'He [the truly ethical man] breaks no leaf from the tree, plucks no flower, is careful to crush no insect with his feet. When he works by his lamp in the summer evening, he prefers to keep his window shut and to breathe the stifling air rather than to see insect after insect falling on his table with singed wings. If after a rain he is walking on the road and sees an earthworm gone astray, he remembers it will dry up in the sun if it does not get back in time to the earth into which it can burrow, and helps it from the fatal stones into the grass. If he comes upon an insect fallen into a puddle, he takes time to save it by extending a leaf or a stalk to it. He is not afraid of being laughed at as sentimental. It is the fate of every truth to be ridiculed before it is recognized. It was once considered stupid to think colored men were really human and must be treated humanely. The time is coming when people will be amazed that it took so long for mankind to recognize that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with ethics.'
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To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.
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Isaiah 53:6:
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
(NIV)
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all. [I Pet. 2:24, 25.](AMP)
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
(KJV)
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