The Economic Functions of Vice Part 2

THE most attractive feature of this self-pruning of the objectionable growths in society, as said before, is that the victims destroy themselves under the hallucination that they are drinking the richest wine of earthly pleasure. When execution can be made a matter of keen relish to the condemned, certainly nothing is wanting on the score of humanity.

{51} I ANTIc.i.p.aTE the objection that slaying bad men by means of their own vicious propensities brings much misery to those connected with them.

But then all innocent persons connected with bad men are fated to suffer in exact proportion to the closeness of the connection, whether the bad men are destroyed or not. Weak, selfish, perverted, and criminal men always inflict misery upon their relatives and a.s.sociates. This is not usually intensified by their being drunkards or debauchees.

It is also true that no one of Nature's methods of extinction is pleasant {52} to those connected with the victim. The thief or thug, prematurely dying with delirium tremens, is certainly quite as bearable a sight to those before whose eyes it may come as the spectacle of a virtuous man, the sole support of his family, slowly wasting away with consumption in spite of all that loving service and agonizing sympathy can do to retain for him a life that is of so much value.

TO the next objection that the practice of vice is not invariably suicidal, since many rascals live to attain as {53} green an old age as the most righteous, it is sufficient to say that plentiful as these exceptions may occasionally seem, their proportion to the whole number is at least as small as that of the exceptions to any other general law of biology.

The policeman on the next corner will bear decided testimony that the number of scoundrels who survive their 30th year is astonis.h.i.+ngly small, and he can point out any number of erstwhile troublesome members of the community who are ending their lives in penitentiary, poorhouse, or hospital at an age when well-behaved men are {54} just entering upon the serious business of life.

It is also demonstrable that the proportion of vicious men to the whole population is much less to-day than at any previous period in the history of the race. This shows conclusively the improvement of society by the self-destructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad men is rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng, because bad men die sooner and propagate fewer than good ones. {55}

SCIENCE is incredulous of any relation between religion and natural laws. Yet it is true now as said thirty centuries ago that--

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

A good understanding have they who keep his commandments."

From the Ten Commandments on, all religions have been the best efforts of their founders and supporters to put man in accord with his environment. This is their essence, though too frequently obscured by the political, theological, and social aspects given them.

While some religions are much better than others, every man gets as {56} good a religion and as much of it as he has capacity for. Nothing has been more clearly demonstrated by thousands of years of strenuous missionary effort than this fact.

Furthermore, any religion is better than none.

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right"

RELIGION, in its primary sense of something to bind back, to bind fast, is a force which restrains a {57} man from acts temporarily attractive but eventually hurtful to himself and others.

Some religions, like the Hebrew, promise in addition to spiritual benefits, long life, worldly success, peace, happiness, and blessings to the children, even to the third and fourth generations.

The Brahmin and Buddhist promise a Nirvana--a dreamless rest from the troubles of life.

The Christian and Mahometan promise an eternity of ineffable bliss.

All of these are based upon the elements of moral science and, at least, {58} give a man a fairly reliable sailing chart for the voyage of life.

Defective as many of them may be, they are the best that human intelligence has so far produced.

Next in order but far inferior in saving power are statute laws and social ethics.

All these influences are potent in that broad, middle ground which separates the best from the worst. They "pluck brands from the burning."

By their means the less aberrant are brought into nearer conformity with Nature's stern requirements.

But for the hopeless defectives,--the misfits in her tireless productiveness {59} --religion, laws, and society are alike weaker than woman's tears.

They themselves sharpen the scythe of the Grim Reaper who brings the only remedy. {60}