VIRTUE AND CRIME 173 



community ; aud that what is more important than skill, know- 

 ledge and culture, if he wishes these three plants that pro- 

 duce the flowers of comfort, content and happiness to grow, 

 is that he must first weed out of the masses of the people 

 all such weeds as indolence, slovenly work or extravagant 

 waste of time (he can leave it to his superiors to attend to 

 such more remunerative duties as management, control, dis- 

 tribution of wealth and accumulation of capital, without which 

 his wage cannot exist), and the government and parsons 

 must turn their attention, not to punishing crime and con- 

 verting the sinner or saving the poor from starvation by 

 charitable doles, but to preventing crime by confining the 

 criminal and compelling him to work under conditions of 

 slavery (for it is a virtue to make a slave of the criminal, loafer 

 and unemployable) and preventing these men from breeding 

 further forms of degenerate humanity. For if you abolish war, 

 you must either restrict the breeding of the unfit and un- 

 healthy, or encourage starvation, one or other, there is no 

 alternative between these two. You must stop the young and 

 foolish and extreme enthusiast being permitted to preach dis- 

 content, disrespect, and disobedience, which are the highroads 

 to poverty and revolution. 



It is only by such a system that we can hope to eradicate 

 the growth of weeds that the manure of increased literary 

 knowledge is ordained to produce that man, by eradicating 

 them, may be worthy to reap a crop of advancement. And be- 

 cause they neglect to keep up the energy of the nation by im- 

 planting high ideals of the value of work, skill and co-opera- 

 tion, obedience and respect to their superiors, and love of 

 honesty and rectitude, and instil in the minds of the young the 

 use and advantage to all classes alike of social distinctions 

 are the reasons why religion is losing its hold upon the people. 

 It is only because the necessity of placing the above principles 

 as the most necessary qualities to national success has not 

 been fully understood, that all literary ages in the past have 

 only accomplished the downfall of past nations because they 

 have not first educated the masses of the people to receive 

 higher knowledge by first implanting higher principles to 

 create a greater love of work, energy and rectitude. So if we 

 wish to succeed where our ancestors have failed, we must first 

 teach the mass of the people that there is a force that rules 



