CHAPTER XXV. INCREASED CIVILIZATION INCREASES MORAL DIFFICULTIES.

From the preceding it appears that the more our race advances in civilization, the more numerous and complicated are the laws of God which must first be discovered and then obeyed.

By advance in civilization is signified increase in the capacities of the human mind for varied enjoyments, and increase in the appropriate supply of these capacities. The early history of the race resembles the early period of individual life, when the chief enjoyments are those of the senses. The refined and varied pleasures of taste are but little attained except by cultivation. So also the higher pleasures of the intellect and of the moral nature are dependent on culture.

As every new avenue to enjoyment is opened, and every new capacity developed, there are inevitably resulting difficulties and temptations which, experience soon shows, must be regulated by laws and penalties. From this results the endless multitude of civil and statute laws, in addition to the various domestic and social rules enforced in the family, the school and the neighborhood.

All these laws and rules will be found to be only specific applications of the great law of sacrifice which demands that, in all cases, every mind shall choose what is best for self and best for the whole. The great democratic principle that the majority shall rule is but one mode of applying this general law of sacrifice.

In this aspect we can perceive how it is, that every attempt to develop any faculty of enjoyment in any created mind, and every effort to provide aliment for such developed capacities is right, as in agreement with the grand end designed by the Creator; provided it is done according to the great law of sacrifice disclosed by reason, viz., that individual enjoyment be made subordinate to the general good, and that no greater good be sacrificed for a less, either for self or for the commonwealth.

In this light, music, drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, the drama, poetry, laughter, all things that impart enjoyment to any mind are _right_, provided no higher good is sacrificed in enjoying them. Nay, more; all these modes of imparting enjoyment may become positive duties, in cases where they do not interfere with some higher good.

This view of the subject still further illustrates the nature of that inability which exists in _all_ finite minds in discovering and obeying the laws of God.

There are only two conceivable modes by which we can learn these laws; one is by the _experience_ of finite beings; the other is by _revelation_ from the Creator. To learn what is right and wrong by experience involves not only the certainty, but the necessity, as it respects the absolute right, of wrong‐doing; for no one, however right the motive or intention may be, can discover what will cause more or less good or evil but by experiments in which the evil as well as the good is detected by experience.

To learn what is right and wrong in all the thousand and million complications of life by revelation, would involve the necessity of a direct revelation every hour of every day, to every individual of the race. But the only conceivable mode by which revelations from God are possible, is by miracles and prophecy, which are interruptions of the ordinary uniformity of nature. It is the fact that the laws of nature are uniform that alone makes miracles possible, so that incessant revelations by miracles would destroy such uniformity, and thus destroy the only conceivable mode of communication from the Creator.

This being so, the only possible method by which mankind can discover what is right and wrong in the greater portion of their actions is by an experience involving, more or less, wrong‐doing as a part.

There are _general rules_ of right and wrong which can be communicated both by God and man, but these rules are to be _applied_ by men to the numberless and ever‐varying circumstances of life, involving still the same necessity of _experience of evil_ in order to detect the _relative_ amount of good to be gained in the varied courses offered for pursuit to which these rules are to be applied.

Now the grand difficulty, as it respects both God and man, as before shown, is the positive inability of undeveloped mind to understand much of what is right and wrong. This difficulty meets the mature mind as really as it does the infant’s; for while many of the general rules evolved by reason and experience are clear, and easily perceived, there are endless varieties of cases in which the _application_ of these rules is a matter of uncertainty. For example, that men are to be honest and speak the truth, are rules universally appreciated. But then come the questions whether this and that thing _is_ honest, or whether in this or that emergency it may not be right to say what is false. The higher men advance in civilization, and the more means and modes of enjoyment are discovered, the more complicated become the questions of right, and the more frequent the temptations to wrong.

All that can be done is to cultivate the conscience and train the reasoning powers of mankind, so that by means of the experience of life, as developed by individuals and communities, regard to the rules of right and wrong shall keep pace with the increasing civilization.

With these distinctions in the mind, we can perceive that _sin_, in its widest sense, including transgression of _unknown_ law, is inevitable in a perfect system of finite minds, while in the limited sense, as transgression of _known_ law, it is not so.

So also we can see, that without the intervention of the Creator to teach us, it is an impossibility for any human being to live without sin; so that this intervention is impossible except to a limited extent, without an entire change in the eternal nature of things to which God’s own will is conformed.