220 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



But how this can be best attained is too extensive a digres- 

 sion for me to attempt in this treatise. But those who fail 

 and become criminals often tend to evolve greater perfections 

 in the community at large, and by so doing in some cases are 

 allowed to make atonement for their parents' sins, if it so 

 happens that the crimes of the sinner are not so gross as to 

 condemn them to damnation. Thus the fallen may, when they 

 have gone through the purgatory of poverty, again be permitted 

 to be improved by the lessons it teaches, and in this manner 

 their children, and in some cases themselves, are again per- 

 mitted to rise in the social scale, sometimes even higher 

 than those of their family who have not been doomed to sin, 

 poverty and failure ; but in any case their sufferings add to 

 the rewards and lustre of the members of their family who 

 have chosen for good, not evil, and even if they are damned by 

 extinction, their few good acts may add to the ultimate virtue 

 of the souls of their family who have lived their lives aright. 



There are few of us who are so bad that we have no 

 good qualities at all. What greater inducement can we 

 have to do good and produce virtue than the beliefs that in 

 exact proportion as our honesty, integrity and charity to 

 others marks our superiority to others, so the future of our 

 lives and the acts of our children's lives, or the lives of their 

 children will become more productive of virtue, and so the 

 prominent virtues of our descendants will raise them in the 

 future just the same as the virtues of our ancestors in the past 

 have made our virtues in the present possible, and also decided 

 our present position in the social scale that we may so restore 

 their chance of immortality ; and in the same way the vices of 

 the successful and rich will condemn some of their children to 

 deteriorate in the social scale, and perhaps to ultimate extinc- 

 tion if their vices exceed their virtues. 



Now I have pointed out that the leaves of the tree do their 

 respective operations in preparing the way for the next year's 

 growth, so it appears to me that the life of each one of us 

 serves to perform its specific duty in evolving the perfections 

 of humanity in general, and our family in particular. So 

 also the wicked are useful in their way and do nearly as much 

 to serve a part in the production of an ultimate perfection of 

 evolution as the good, so what is in itself often an evil is per- 

 mitted, yes, even ordained by God that greater good may 



