The Economic Functions of Vice | Page 6

So the Hohenzollerns grew, and Prussia grew from a despised
sandbarren to be one of the Six Great Powers of Europe, and is now the
head of the mighty German Empire.
We do not have as full history of the House of Savoy, but we have
enough to know that in much the same way, at the same time, and by
much the same moral discipline, it arose from the lordship of a little
stretch of mountain land in the Alps to rule over United Italy.
* * *
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.

* * *
ANTICIPATE 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 associates.
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
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.
* * *
OF the next objection that the practice of vice is not invariably suicidal,
since many rascals live to attain as 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 astonishingly
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 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 selfdestructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad men is
rapidly diminishing, because bad men die sooner and propagate fewer
than good ones.
* * *
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
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 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,
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