MIND AND SOUL 219 



The advance of society is .evolved by the alternate reaction 

 brought about by the extremes of society in each succeeding 

 generation practising the opposite crimes and virtues to those 

 practised by the preceding ones. Thus the crimes of the rich 

 produce a feeling of disgust amongst the poor which induces 

 them to practise the opposite virtues in their effort to excel 

 their superiors, but in so doing they get to ignore the virtues 

 of those above them, which virtues are probably of greater 

 value and importance than the crimes that they condemn, but 

 as these are also far beyond their attainment or comprehension, 

 their inferiors fail to appreciate them. Thus the poor excel 

 in the crimes that are the antipathies of the virtues of their 

 superiors and the virtues opposite to their crimes. Then re- 

 action sets in and their superiors become ashamed of their own 

 crimes when they see them side by side with the opposite 

 virtues that their inferiors are now practising, so set to work 

 to correct these faults also in themselves, but in so doing 

 allow some other sin to become a crime. This again sets 

 the mass of the people at work to evolve a new and fresh form 

 of virtue. In this manner the top and bottom of society are 

 the two extremes that are made up of the extreme characters 

 that evolve the extremes of good and evil, saint and devil. 



Society is formed on the same principle as water boils but by 

 reversing the process. For the unfit descend and the fit ascend 

 and descend as they advance the average standard of the per- 

 fection of the less rapidly effected masses who represent the 

 stability and negative forces of society as the top and bottom 

 represent the motive influences of progression. Thus both ends 

 of society tend to improve the mass, and this is why society 

 is a necessity to enable us to modify stringent punishment, 

 and this is where the abuse often comes in when we forget that 

 the principal use of society is to enable us to condone the sins 

 of our neighbours and so obviate the necessity of enforcing the 

 laws. Thus we often abuse it by turning it into a means of 

 uncharitable condemnation and of injustice and strife, instead 

 of using it to increase the unity, charity and forgiveness of the 

 social failings of our neighbour and of assisting him to become 

 more efficient and to rise in the social scale, and to find out the 

 best way to put up with their shortcomings and so increase the 

 charity, justice and mercy of the masses in the struggle that 

 evolution is now beginning to call upon mankind to undertake. 



