MIND AND SOUL 211 



verance to turn their sins and failures into successes or useful- 

 ness, and so become wise and worthy of repetition on to the 

 final days of immortality. The bad are those who, lacking 

 sufficient powers of energy and self-control, allow their sins 

 to become a nuisance to their neighbours and whose loss of 

 opportunities make their lives a wasted failure and so consti- 

 tute the unfit souls that are to be damned by extinction before 

 the days of immortality arrive. 



But the sins of both the good or the wise and the bad or the 

 foolish are wisely permitted to exist because they both equally 

 advance the virtues of the majority who make up the whole, 

 of which both the good and the bad are but small minorities. 

 But in every case true Virtue or Wisdom brings its just and 

 equitable rewards in Success and Social Esteem, and Crime 

 or Folly its condemnation by Failure and Social Degradation 

 both in our lives and the lives of our children. So our souls 

 live on from age to age, reproducing themselves in the growth 

 of succeeding generations, each contributing their quota, after 

 many relapses and failures to the slow but gradual advance- 

 ment of the community as it gradually moves along the steep 

 high-road of progress towards the city of immortality, destined 

 as time rolls on to slowly become more and more free from vice 

 and crime till " The winter of our discontent is made glorious 

 summer " sunshine by the evolution of eternal life, when the 

 more perfect development of our family tree shall be fit to bloom 

 in Paradise. 



And what better inducement can we have to make the best 

 use of our time, body, mind and brains than the belief that 

 every act we perform in this life for the good of bur fellow- 

 men (I am of the opinion that acts performed solely for our 

 own good and that do not in any way contribute to the mainten- 

 ance or enjoyment of others may give us temporary pleasure 

 and so be God's means of rewarding our past virtues or those 

 of our progenitors, but can give no lasting happiness, nor 

 bring any regard upon our children, and if bought at the price 

 of the suffering or annoyance of others, they will bring a 

 greater amount of subsequent suffering and disappointment on 

 ourselves and punishments on our future life in the bodies 

 of our children, unless taking the warning they contain to 

 heart, we make atonement and restitution for them before our 

 death) will meet with its full and complete reward of happi- 



