MIND AND SOUL 205 



hand of God, and will ultimately leave only those who lead 

 good and useful lives, and that in proportion to our bad deeds 

 so a proportion of our children and their children are doomed 

 to deterioration and possibly to extinction. For God makes 

 all indolence and vice and waste of opportunities the cause of 

 final extinction of the unfit, and determination in all energy 

 and increase of virtue the road to perfection of fitness in 

 animal and mental powers, and to final immortality in the 

 case of man. Thus it appears to me that our virtues and 

 vices are transmitted from father to son and from generation 

 to generation until a future generation brings them to perfec- 

 tion if the family preponderates in virtuous members or excels 

 in virtue and prunes out by death and extinction of individual 

 families or branches of families those who in the long run fail 

 to progress. Damnation, therefore, can only be the extinction 

 of any branch of any individual family, or the final extinction 

 of any collection of family branches, nation or species, who by 

 abuse of intellect, talent, or want of energy, wisdom or self- 

 control so allow their physical or mental abilities to depreciate 

 that they forfeit thereby their claim to reproduce in their 

 offspring the power of re-creation demanded by the advances 

 in evolution. Nevertheless, when the evils only exist in a 

 lesser degree, future generations may by marriage or inter- 

 mingling of individuals or races redeem portions of a family, 

 race, nation or species from total damnation, if such minorities 

 produce by their failures and decadence certain virtues in which 

 they preponderate even if the bulk may be condemned to 

 destruction for failure in the majority of cases. 



In this way the Almighty prunes out by death and ultimately 

 grubs up by extinction that portion of the family or race that 

 fails to evolve the virtues required by the particular age of 

 evolution or particular circumstances of your life, or are so 

 deteriorated by vice that their further existence is detrimental 

 to the rest of the community, or who have failed to develop 

 up to the required average, and so are left behind in the 

 spiritual fight for the survival of the fittest, just as the animals 

 who failed to evolve brains in physical evolution have been 

 outplaced by those who did. 



With apologies for this lengthy but desirable transgression, 

 I will now continue the illustration of the evolution of plant 

 and animal life and of mental life. Now when the seed is sown 



