{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31768/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31768","id":"gutenberg_31768","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31768","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Sociology","Conduct of life"],"text":"Produced by David Widger (Images obtained from the Google Books Project)\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF VICE\n\n\nBy John McElroy\n\n\nWASHINGTON, D. C.\n\nPublished by The National Tnbune\n\nCopyright, 1906\n\n\n     \u201cAre God and Nature then at strife,\n     That Nature lends such evil dreams?\n     So careful of the type she seems,\n\n     So careless of the single life.\u201d\n\n                 ------\n\n     \u201cAnd the individual withers,\n     and the world is more and more.\u201d\n\n     --Tennyson.\n\n\n[Transcriber\u2019s Note: Numbers in the text enclosed by curly\nbrackets indicate the page numbers in the printed book. DW]\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF VICE\n\nFOR some inscrutable reason which she has as yet given no hint of\nrevealing, Nature is wondrously wasteful in the matter of generation.\nShe creates a thousand where she intends to make use of one.\n\nImbued with the maternal instinct, the female cod casts millions of eggs\nupon the waters, expecting them to return after many days as troops of\ninteresting {7} offspring. Instead, half die embryotic gadi are almost\nimmediately devoured by spawn-eaters, hundreds of thousands perish in\nincubation, hundreds of thousands more succumb to the perils attending\nichthyic infancy, leaving but a few score to attain to adult usefulness\nand pass an honored old age with the fragrance of a well-spent life in\nthe country grocery.\n\nThe oak showers down 10,000 acorns, each capable of producing a tree.\nThree-fourths of them are straightway diverted from their arboreal\nintent through conversion into food by the provident squirrel and\nimprovident hog. Great numbers rot uselessly upon the {8} ground, and\nthe few hundred that finally succeed in germinating grow up into dense\nthickets, where at last die strongest smothers out all the rest like an\noaken Othello in a harem of quercine Desdemonas.\n\n                     ------\n\nTHIS is the law of all life, animal as well as vegetable. From the\nhumble hyssop on the wall to the towering cedar of Lebanon, from the\nmeek and lowly amoeba--which has no more character or individuality than\nany other pin-point of jelly--to the lordly tyrant {9} man, the rule is\ninevitable and invariable.\n\nLife is sown broadcast only to be followed almost immediately by a\ndestruction nearly as swift. Nature creates by the million apparently\nthat she may destroy by the myriads. She gives life one instant only\nthat she may snatch it away the next. The main difference is that the\nhigher we ascend the less lavish is the creation and the less sweeping\nthe destruction.\n\nThus, while probably but one fish out of a thousand reaches maturity, of\n1,000 children born 604 attain adult age; that is, Nature flings aside\n999 out of every 1,000 fish as useless for {10} her purposes, and two\nout of every five human beings.\n\n                    ------\n\nMANY see in this relentless weeding out and destruction of her inferior\nproducts a remarkable illustration of the wisdom of Nature\u2019s methods.\nWhat would they think of a workman so bungling that two-fifths of the\nproducts of his handicraft were only fit for destruction?\n\nThe \u201cstruggle for existence\u201d is a murderous scramble to get rid of this\nvast surplusage. The \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d is the success of the\nminority in {11} demonstrating that the majority are superfluous. It is\nthe Kilkenny-cat episode multiplied by infinity. It will be remembered\nthat the whole trouble arose from the common belief that two cats were a\nsurplus of one for the Kilkenny environment.\n\nDarwin\u2019s theory recognizes in this super-fecundity of nature a most\npotent adjunct for improvement He says, in fact, that the impossibility\nof providing subsistence for more than a fraction of the multitudinous\ncreation causes a mortal struggle in which the weaker and inferior are\nexterminated and only the stronger and superior survive. These in turn,\nhave offspring like the leaves {12} of the forest, which in like turn\nare winnowed out by alien enemies and reciprocal extermination, and\nthus the process goes on with the sanguinary regularity of the King\nof Dahomey\u2019s administration of the internal economy of his realm. The\nbenignity of this method of arranging the order of things is not so\napparent as a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to\nAnimals might desire.\n\n                    ------\n\nBUT our opinion of this law is not cared for. It is academic and\nsuperfluous. The main importance {13} attaches to the recognition of the\nfact that it is a law.\n\nIts application to society is obvious: Since the propagation of human\nbeings goes on with entire recklessness as to the quality of the product\nand the means of subsistence, some strong corrective is absolutely\nnecessary to establish limits to populations and to secure the continued\ndevelopment of the race.\n\nIf every begotten child lived to the average age of 40, in a very few\nyears there would not be standing room on the earth for its people.\n\nEven with such limited propagators as the elephant, each female of which\nproduces but six offspring in her bearing {14} period of 90 years, we\nare told that if the species had no parasitic or other enemy it would\nonly be 740 years until elephants would overrun the earth.\n\nWhere then should we assign limits to the productiveness of the\n750,000,000 human females on the globe, each of whom is capable of\nproducing 20 children in her 30 years of bearing?\n\nIf, too, every child had the same chance of life without reference to\nits mental and physical fitness to live, humanity would soon become a\nstagnant slough of vicious vitality. There are only food and room for\nthe best, and as the development of the race demands {15} it, only\nthe best survive and continue the work of propagation. The rest are\ndestroyed.\n\n                    ------\n\nBY the \u201cbest\u201d is understood those having that harmony of mental and\nphysical development which brings them most nearly into accord with\nNature\u2019s laws.\n\n                    ------\n\nBELOW the human stratum superabundant generation is neutralized by the\nsimple device of having {16} every organism prey upon some other one.\nIn her 10 years of fruitful life the female cod lays 50,000,000 eggs.\nIf nothing thwarted the amiable efforts of herself and offspring to\nmultiply and replenish, they would shortly pack the ocean as full as a\nbox of sardines.\n\nWhile, however, giving one female the desire and capacity to produce\n50,000,000 lives, nature has given other animals the desire and capacity\nto annihilate most of those 50,000,000 lives.\n\nSo all through the animal kingdom it is nearly a neck-to-neck race\nbetween production and extermination.\n\nLife is a universal and unceasing {17} struggle, between the eaters and\nthe eaten.\n\n                    ------\n\nMAN alone is practically exempt from what is apparently an invariable\n\ncondition of all other forms of animal life. While he preys upon a\nmyriad of created things, there is no created thing that preys on him\nand assists in keeping his excessive produc tiveness within the limits\nof subsistence. Most significant of all, not even a parasite wages\ndestructive warfare against him. That is, if we except from the\nclassification the doctors\u2019 latest explanation {18} of the cause\nof everything, from pneumonia to laziness--the modest but effective\nbacillus. The bacillus, however, is much more a condition than a\nparasite.\n\nThis absence of destructive enemies must be compensated for in some way,\nand it is accomplished by making vicious inclinations the agents to weed\nout the redundant growths and to select for extermination those\nwhich are inferior, depraved, weak, and unfit for preservation or\nreproduction.\n\nIf five human beings are procreated where there is present room and\nprovision but for three, how are the surplus {19} two to be picked out\nand exterminated?\n\nOf course each one of us feels entirely competent to pick out in his own\ncommunity the persons who could be best spared, but public opinion is\nat present hostile both to any practical plan of making the necessary\nthinning out, and also to lodging the power of selection in the hands of\nthose of us best calculated for the duty.\n\n                    ------\n\nAPPARENTLY the surplus ones relieve us from embarrassment on this score\nby selecting to exterminate {20} themselves. Their methods of suicide\ncover a wide range of expedients but all are very effective.\n\nAnd most beneficent of any of the facts connected with this subject\nis that each of those chosen for extermination embraces his fate with\npositive eagerness, under the delusion that he is about to enhance his\nown happiness.\n\nImmoderate use of stimulants and the varied excesses and vital errors\nwhich are grouped under the general head of \u201cdissipation,\u201d a \u201clove of\npleasure,\u201d or the still {21} more expressive phrase \u201ca short life and\na merry one,\u201d etc., are favorite ways of self-annihilation and leave\nlittle to be desired in the completeness with which they do their work.\n\nEnglish statisticians formerly estimated that if a man drank beer in\nlarge quantities it took him 21.7 years to kill himself, which period\nthe whisky-drinker shortened to 16.1 years.\n\nCloser study and wider knowledge have materially changed these\nconclusions, to the great detriment of beer. For once, and upon one\npoint, the physicians of the world have agreed. American, English, and\nGerman doctors say with one voice that the most {22} hopeless patient\nwho comes into their hands is the soaked, crapulous, beer-drinker.\n\u201cPoint out a gray-haired beer-drinker,\u201d they challenge, and challenge in\nvain. Gray-haired whisky-drinkers may be found, but not the others.\n\nStarch in every stage of decay, carried by the all-penetrating alcohol,\nsurcharges the tissues with putrefaction, and makes the tumid veins a\nforcing-ground for bacteria. Thus the beer-drinker\u2019s slight cold becomes\nat once pneumonia, or inflammatory rheumatism, or Bright\u2019s disease, and\nhis life flickers out like a candle in a gusty passage.\n\nIntemperance being among the milder vices kills slowly. Sexual sins slay\n{23} more rapidly, and the criminal grades of vice do their work with a\nswiftness in proportion to their flagrancy. The Psalmist says, \u201cbloody\nand deceitful men shall not live out half their days,\u201d but police\nrecords will show that David materially overrates the average. \u201cOne\nquarter their days\u201d would approach much nearer exactness.\n\n                    ------\n\nRETURNING to the major premise that the \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d means\nthe selection and preservation of those individuals who are most nearly\nin harmony with the conditions {24} of their environment, and that the\nprogress of the race or species involves the destruction of the weaker\nor the inferior who are not in such harmony, the conclusion follows that\nany aberration toward vice shows such discordance in the individual\nwith the laws of his environment as marks him as inferior, weak, and\nobstructive of the race\u2019s development\n\nVice is not so much a cause as an effect--precisely as disease is a\nsymptom. Vice does not make a nature weak or defective: a weak and\ndefective nature expresses its weaknesses and defects in vice, and that\nexpression brings about in one way and another {25} the sovereign remedy\nof extermination.\n\n                    ------\n\nMUCH is said of the devastation of our fairest and brightest by the\nDrink Demon. This is mainly nonsense. It was more nearly true in former\ngenerations, when intemperance was an almost universal vice. As\n\nHamlet says:\n\n     \u201cit is a custom\n     More honor\u2019d in the breach than the observance.\n     This heavy-headed revel east and west\n     Makes us traduced and tax\u2019d of other nations:\n     They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase\n     Soil our addition.\u201d\n\n{26} Morals has made wonderful progress since then, in all directions,\nand heavy drinking has been more and more restricted to those who are\n\n\u201cMarked cross from the womb and perverse.\u201d\n\nWith few exceptions every one who goes to perdition by the alcohol route\nwould reach that destination by some other highway if the alcohol line\nwere not running.\n\nEvery man whose sloth or improvidence has brought himself and his family\nto beggary, every thieving tramp upon the highways, every rascal in the\npenitentiary, every murderer upon the gallows, hastens to plead \u201cwhisky\nbrought {27} me to this!\u201d because he knows that such a plea will bring\nhim a gush of sloppy sympathy unobtainable by other means.\n\nWhisky makes no man lazy, shiftless, dishonest, false, cowardly or\nbrutal. These must be original qualities with him. If he has them he\nwill probably take to whisky--though not inevitably--which then does the\ncommunity the splendid service of hurrying him along to destruction, and\nof abridging his infliction upon the public. {28}\n\n                    ------\n\nPEOPLE who have done much in the way of reforming drunkards have been\nastonished to find how little real manhood remained after eliminating\nwhisky from the equation. They had supposed the manhood to be only\nobscured, and were disheartened to find how frequently it happened to be\ndemonstrated that there never was enough of it to pay for the trouble of\n\u201csaving the victim of intemperance.\u201d Like the cherubim before the throne\nof God, the Temperance orators \u201ccon- tinually do cry,\u201d the burden of\ntheir song being that hundreds of thousands are annually slain by the\nmonster Intemperance. {29} Quite singularly these figures are probably\nnot exaggerated. Myriads of times kindly-hearted physicians write in the\ndeath certificate \u201cpneumonia,\u201d \u201cheart-failure,\u201d \u201cdiabetes,\u201d etc., when\ntruth demands \u201cbeer\u201d or \u201cwhisky.\u201d\n\n                    ------\n\nBUT what of this?\n\nIs it not merely Nature sweeping out her overcrowded workshop? Ridding\nher laboratory of misfits, defectives, and rejects? Into her junk pile\nalcohol whisks away daily thousands of thieves, gamblers, prostitutes,\nloafers, \u201csports,\u201d spongers, swindlers, {30} and others of the criminal\nand quasi-criminal classes. Over their moldering clay the daisies bloom\nin sweet oblivion of\n\n     \u201cThe sins and crimes\n     Done in their days of nature.\u201d\n\nUpon these alcoholism accommodatingly performs the office of judge and\nexecutioner, cutting their careers off at an average of five years,\nwhich, without this interposition, would possibly be extended to 20 or\n30. The certainty and celerity with which it ferrets out and destroys\nthese classes gives it strong advantages over the ordinary processes of\ndestruction.\n\nIt was exceedingly unfortunate for {31} the community that the leaders\nof the James and Younger gangs were temperate men. Had it not been so,\ntheir careers, instead of extending over 20 harassing years, would have\nbeen cut short inside of five. Uncontrollable predilection for whisky,\nand the society of strange women brought about the destruction of nearly\nall of the band who from time to time were slain by each other\u2019s hands\nor those of justice. Temperance and chastity in a rascal of any kind\nmean an immense amount of mischief to the community. Fortunately\nthey are quite rare. {32} THE rapid spread of Prohibition is full\nof suggestion. The grain fields of Kansas and Texas are periodically\ndevastated by the green bug. When the green bugs are at their worst a\nparasite appears which sweeps them off, and the wheat growers have a\nrespite. Then, having destroyed their provender, the parasites starve,\nand the green bugs have a chance to grow again until the parasites\novertake them in the hour of their triumph and power.\n\nWill the suppression of the alcoholic scavenger allow the criminals and\nquasi-criminals to multiply like the green bugs? {33}\n\n                    ------\n\nDURING the ages of terrible oppression of the European peoples which\nculminated in the French Revolution, the main amelioration of the\nhardships endured was found in the vices of the oppressors. The sword of\nthe duelist, quarreling over women, the picturesque horrors of delirium\ntremens, and the loathsome mal de Naples continually swept away\nhecatombs of tyrant lordlings and frequently obliterated whole families.\nIn fact no aristocratic family ever withstood these adverse influences\nvery long. Extinction came as promptly and as certainly as the curculio\nto the ripening plum. The student of French and English {34} history is\ncontinually astonished at the brief time in which noble names remain in\nview. They rise to dizzy eminence on one page, and on the next go down\nto oblivion. One rarely finds the name of a century or two ago mentioned\nin any of the European news of to-day. Mr. Freeman, the eminent English\nhistorian, says, conclusively, that in spite of the perennial vaunt of\nancestors who \u201ccame over with the Conqueror,\u201d and of Tennyson\u2019s musical\nmendacity about the \u201cdaughter of an hundred Earls,\u201d the families who can\ntrace back to even so recent a date as the reign of the Stuarts are\nvery rare. {35} Frequently hundreds of years elapsed before the historic\ntitles were \u201crevived\u201d to gild some parvenu. Since then these families\nhave been kept up only by intermarriages with later parvenus.\n\nThe royal family itself has been repeatedly on the point of extinction,\nand the continuity of the line only maintained by extraordinary efforts.\n\n                      ------\n\nIDLENESS, luxury, and more or less flagrant debauchery have done their\nappointed work in removing the deteriorated forms of human life {36}\nfrom the world, that their room might be had for more acceptable\ngrowths.\n\n                    ------\n\nSOCIETY has been most aptly likened to a vat of good wine, which is scum\nand froth at the top, dregs and sediment at the bottom, and good, pure,\nclear liquor in the middle. Vice does admirable work in skimming away\nthe supernatant scum and in drawing off the dregs and settlings.\n\nUnceasing fermentation seems to be a condition necessary to the health\nof society. The humblest work incessantly to lift themselves into the\nranks of {37} the middle-classes, the middle-classes strive as earnestly\nto make themselves plutocrats, aristocrats, and lordlings. This ambition\nfor worldly advancement is one of society\u2019s most powerful adjuncts\nfor good. When a man at last reaches the social summit he desists\nfrom further efforts at improvement. He becomes like a man who after\nstruggling forward to reach the head of the procession refuses to march\nanother step. Some vice, mayhap merely over-eating, is likely to remove\nhim and secure the ground for another man to come to the front, who\nis also removed summarily when he becomes obstructive. If the\nfortune-builder is {38} not thus removed, his children are subject to\nattack.\n\nWere it not for this, the upper stratum of society would speedily\nbecome so crowded that ascent to it would be impossible, all healthful,\nambitious motive be taken away from the middle and lower classes,\nstagnation follow, and society perish from congestion.\n\n                    ------\n\nHISTORY is full of illustrations of the benefits of vice in assisting to\nshape the destinies of Nations and peoples. Take, for example, the {39}\nBourbons whose stupidity and tyranny have passed into a proverb. In\nthe last century their worse than worthless personalities filled nearly\nevery throne in southern Europe. They seemed to breed like wolves in\na famine-stricken land, and their fangs were at every people\u2019s throat\nFortunately they had vices. Wine and lechery did what human enemies\ncould not and the pack of wolves rotted away like a flock of diseased\nsheep. The mortality was so regular that for a long time French kings\nwere succeeded by their grand-sons and great-grandsons, their sons all\nburning themselves out before the time came for ascending the throne.\n{40} The unutterably vile life of Louis XV. was terminated by the\nsmallpox communicated to him in the course of a most disgraceful amour.\nHis grandson, who succeeded him, had no destructive vices, and so\nthe people were compelled at last to resort to the guillotine to rid\nthemselves of him. The vast problem for the French in 1790 would have\nbeen greatly simplified if Louis XVI. had been a shortlived debauchee\nlike his father and two brothers. The healthy German blood of his Saxon\nmother corrected some-what the virus in the Bourbon veins, and he lived\nto become an intolerable cumberer and obstructive.\n\n                    ------\n\n{41} The only Bourbon still remaining on a throne is the King of Spain,\nand his teeth are on edge from the sour grapes of unchastity which his\nfathers and mothers ate.\n\nLike his grandmother, the notorious Isabella II, his father, aunts,\nand cousins, and indeed every one of the Bourbons, he is a sad physical\nweakling.\n\nThe physicians politely term \u201cscrofulous diathesis\u201d the syphilitic taint\nof the Bourbon blood. In his grandmother it showed itself in a repulsive\ncutaneous disease which she tried to ameliorate or cure in a truly\nBourbon-ish way, by having her underclothing {42} previously worn by a\nnun of high repute for piety.\n\nAlfonso\u2019s XIII.\u2019s father burned himself out at the age of 28. His aunts\nand kinsmen all had some one or more of scrofula\u2019s varied physical\ndegradations and deformities, and went out from time to time like\nill-made candles.\n\nThough the hopes of his race and the peace of his country depend upon\nAlfonso\u2019s life, all the care given him in his boyhood could do no more\nthan slightly mitigate the ancestral blight.\n\n                    ------\n\n{43} A FEW years ago the people of Holland were threatened with a most\nserious calamity. Depraved heredity, unwise sexual selection, or some\nother primal cause had resulted in the production, as the Prince of\nOrange--the Crown Prince--of an individual of a weak, inferior, and\ndepraved nature. His was such a nature as on a throne becomes a fountain\nof numberless oppressions and evils, and rarely fails to goad the\nunhappy subjects into rebellion, attended with the usual frightful loss\nof life and property and vast sorrows. Fortunately he had destructive\nvices. The appetite for these led him to Paris. A few years of riot\nand {44} debauchery sapped away the dangerous life of \u201cLemons,\u201d as his\nworthless boon-companions named him, and he died as the fool dieth. The\nonly harm he was able to do was the indirect damage of a bad example,\nand the good people of the Netherlands were rid of a possible Louis XV.\nat no greater cost than that of some years of extravagant life in the\nFrench capital. His father\u2019s evil excesses and penchant for pretty\nballet-girls left as his only successor a young not over-strong girl,\nwho thus far has failed to produce an heir to the throne, to the deep\ndisappointment of such of her people as love royalty. Holland will,\ntherefore, {45} in all probability, glide into a republic without the\nusual sanguinary convulsions attending such transitions.\n\n                    ------\n\nIT is the story of the Ages--old when the Pyramids were yet young; new to\nevery generation. Hannibal\u2019s victorious army found the \u201csoft delights of\nCapua\u201d far more deadly than Roman swords. That famous \u201cWinter in Capua\u201d\n wrecked the invaders, saved Rome, and ruined Carthage.\n\n                    ------\n\n{46} IN conspicuous contrast to the royal and aristocratic families just\nalluded to are the houses of Hohenzollern and Savoy.\n\nA thrifty burgher of Nuremberg, eager to get into the landed aristocracy\non any terms, foreclosed a mortgage on a stretch of most unpromising\nsand and swamp around Brandenberg. It was of so little worth as to be\nfrequently spoken of as \u201cthe sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire,\u201d The\nHohenzollerns\n\nattacked this uninviting problem with real German thrift and tenacity.\nThey resolved to make their swamps and sand barrens productive like\nthe rich lands of their neighbors. {47} Flinching from no drudgery\nthemselves, they would allow none of their people to do so. Every\nHohenzollern son and daughter was brought up to unsparing hard work,\nsevere economy, plain food and coarse clothing, with a rigid code of\nmorals.\n\nAt the time when the example of Louis XIV. was debauching every German\nprinceling into having a showy court with a pretentious palace and a\ntinseled retinue, all wrung from the poor peasantry, the King of Prussia\nwas running his court after the manner of a close-fisted, land-gaining\nGerman farmer.\n\nCabbages that could not be sold {48} were served on the royal tables in\norder to save a few thalers for the support of the army, and add to the\nwar chest.\n\nThe shabby appointments of the palace were the derision of Europe. The\ncommon people of Prussia had, however, a much larger share of what their\nlabor produced than those of any other part of Europe. The King not\nonly set a good example in making the most out of everything, but he\npersonally caned lessons of industry and frugality into his people, high\nand low.\n\nThere were occasionally black sheep in even such a sternly regulated\nfamily, but as a general rule the sons and daughters married strong,\nclean mates, {49} and strictly maintained the family traditions. A\nprovision against the way ward princelings was made by which their\npossessions passed into the main house if they fell below the standard.\nSo the Hohenzollerns grew, and Prussia grew from a despised sandbarren\nto be one of the Six Great Powers of Europe, and is now the head of the\nmighty German Empire. We do not have as full history of the House of\nSavoy, but we have enough to know that in much the same way, at the same\ntime, and by much the same moral discipline, it arose from the lordship\nof a little stretch of mountain {50} land in the Alps to rule over\nUnited Italy.\n\n                    ------\n\nTHE most attractive feature of this self-pruning of the objectionable\ngrowths in society, as said before, is that the victims destroy\nthemselves under the hallucination that they are drinking the richest\nwine of earthly pleasure. When execution can be made a matter of keen\nrelish to the condemned, certainly nothing is wanting on the score of\nhumanity.\n\n                    ------\n\n{51} I ANTICIPATE the objection that slaying bad men by means of their\nown vicious propensities brings much misery to those connected with\nthem.\n\nBut then all innocent persons connected with bad men are fated to suffer\nin exact proportion to the closeness of the connection, whether the bad\nmen are destroyed or not. Weak, selfish, perverted, and criminal men\nalways inflict misery upon their relatives and associates. This is not\nusually intensified by their being drunkards or debauchees.\n\nIt is also true that no one of Nature\u2019s methods of extinction is\npleasant {52} to those connected with the victim. The thief or thug,\nprematurely dying with delirium tremens, is certainly quite as bearable\na sight to those before whose eyes it may come as the spectacle of a\nvirtuous man, the sole support of his family, slowly wasting away with\nconsumption in spite of all that loving service and agonizing sympathy\ncan do to retain for him a life that is of so much value.\n\n                    ------\n\nTO the next objection that the practice of vice is not invariably\nsuicidal, since many rascals live to attain as {53} green an old age\nas the most righteous, it is sufficient to say that plentiful as these\nexceptions may occasionally seem, their proportion to the whole number\nis at least as small as that of the exceptions to any other general law\nof biology.\n\nThe policeman on the next corner will bear decided testimony that the\nnumber of scoundrels who survive their 30th year is astonishingly small,\nand he can point out any number of erstwhile troublesome members of\nthe community who are ending their lives in penitentiary, poorhouse, or\nhospital at an age when well-behaved men are {54} just entering upon the\nserious business of life.\n\nIt is also demonstrable that the proportion of vicious men to the\nwhole population is much less to-day than at any previous period in the\nhistory of the race. This shows conclusively the improvement of society\nby the self-destructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad men is\nrapidly diminishing, because bad men die sooner and propagate fewer than\ngood ones. {55}\n\n                    ------\n\nSCIENCE is incredulous of any relation between religion and natural\nlaws. Yet it is true now as said thirty centuries ago that--\n\n     \u201cThe fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.\n     A good understanding have they who keep his commandments.\u201d\n\nFrom the Ten Commandments on, all religions have been the best\nefforts of their founders and supporters to put man in accord with his\nenvironment. This is their essence, though too frequently obscured by\nthe political, theological, and social aspects given them.\n\nWhile some religions are much better than others, every man gets as {56}\ngood a religion and as much of it as he has capacity for. Nothing\nhas been more clearly demonstrated by thousands of years of strenuous\nmissionary effort than this fact.\n\nFurthermore, any religion is better than none.\n\n     \u201cFor modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,\n     His can\u2019t be wrong, whose life is in the right\u201d\n\n                          ------\n\nRELIGION, in its primary sense of something to bind back, to bind fast,\nis a force which restrains a {57} man from acts temporarily attractive\nbut eventually hurtful to himself and others.\n\nSome religions, like the Hebrew, promise in addition to spiritual\nbenefits, long life, worldly success, peace, happiness, and blessings to\nthe children, even to the third and fourth generations.\n\nThe Brahmin and Buddhist promise a Nirvana--a dreamless rest from the\ntroubles of life.\n\nThe Christian and Mahometan promise an eternity of ineffable bliss.\n\nAll of these are based upon the elements of moral science and, at least,\n{58} give a man a fairly reliable sailing chart for the voyage of life.\n\nDefective as many of them may be, they are the best that human\nintelligence has so far produced.\n\nNext in order but far inferior in saving power are statute laws and\nsocial ethics.\n\nAll these influences are potent in that broad, middle ground which\nseparates the best from the worst. They \u201cpluck brands from the burning.\u201d\n\nBy their means the less aberrant are brought into nearer conformity with\nNature\u2019s stern requirements.\n\nBut for the hopeless defectives,--the misfits in her tireless\nproductiveness {59} --religion, laws, and society are alike weaker than\nwoman\u2019s tears.\n\nThey themselves sharpen the scythe of the Grim Reaper who brings the\nonly remedy. {60}\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of Project Gutenberg\u2019s The Economic Functions of Vice, by John McElroy","title":"The Economic Functions of Vice","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":4961}