160 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



religious laws are prone to err, and that only the power to 

 use to the best advantage for the benefit of all concerned, 

 either persons or nations, really confers the right to possess. 

 And as power to use to the best advantage varies from genera- 

 tion to generation, with nations as much as it does with indi- 

 viduals, unless all nations, as well as science and religion, 

 adopt a more give-and-take policy, all attempts at permanent 

 peace and national tolerance are out of the question, and both 

 parties must make huge sacrifices to meet each other. 



I will now give another instance of how abstract truths may 

 be perverted to concrete evils. The German philosophy that 

 might is right is an example of how far this evil can be 

 carried to excess, and once we forget to remember that God 

 alone can control our acts or the distribution of wealth and 

 power, man can only upset or control the correct balance of 

 distribution on give-and-take lines. So German autocracy 

 errs by assuming that the state has the right to arrogate to 

 itself the power to rule the souls as well as the bodies of its 

 subjects, and that the good of one state or nation confers the 

 right for it to dominate the freedom of all others, and that 

 nothing is evil that you have the might to enforce. English 

 philosophy errs on the other hand by trying to make God 

 subservient to its greed, by claiming that you have the right 

 to keep and hold unjust privileges by law", and to grant indi- 

 vidual privileges to minorities irrespective of the claims of the 

 community. 



So although God rewards and punishes us in this life and 

 the lives of our children with the utmost detail and justice, 

 he considers us only as a chess player would consider the 

 pawns and pieces on a chess-board. Thus at one time murder 

 was the greatest virtue, but now when done through spite and 

 under wrong conditions, it is the greatest of crimes, but when 

 done in self-defence, or as a means of capital punishment, and 

 even yet in times of war, it ceases to be a crime and becomes 

 a virtue, in the same way that under certain conditions poly- 

 gamy is more moral than monogamy. But in making these 

 statements I do not mean to champion murder or immorality. 

 They are always crimes in the concrete, just as much, or very 

 nearly as much, as laziness and gluttony, which are the 

 greatest of all crimes, laziness, gluttony and meanness being 

 the three crimes in men, and immorality, jealousy and spite 



