The abuse of evil consists chiefly in being conquered by it, permitting discord to become positive and master. The true use of evil consists in journeying over it to whatever is best. Evil is not a principle but the temporary subversion of individual rights, the inversion of private faculties, traceable to the protracted night of human ignorance and thence perpetuated through after ages by the power of selfishness. Reformers have no mythological devil to wrestle with, no wicked self-existent principle. We stand erect, prepared to overcome evil with good, to harmonise and straighten the misdirected works of ignorance and selfishness, to fulfil the local conditions of fixed laws, to build up the temple of individual harmony and to heal the nations thereby.
We must probe the depths of human misdirection; the deep seas of existence must yield up their contents. Superficial reform is unworthy the full-souled philanthropist. Look truly into the fountains of human evil and suffering and you will discover their three sources in (1) imperfect organisation, (2) defective education, (3) immoral situation. The primary misdirection comes about through hereditary transmission of passions and disease. Herein our hope for humanity—never so large as now—is the march of mind in fields of physical science, the control of generative conditions, and improvement of the type of procreation. The next fertile fountain of
misdirection is education, and hereon are fixed the national hatreds of the earth. Each nation has a stereo-typed pattern of what is right and wrong, a peculiar conscience or standard of judgment which is branded upon its youth, and thus our soul comes to esteem as sacred that which another is taught to regard as secular. It comes about even that the conscientiousness of the one is identical with rascality in the other.1 The third misdirection, being that of situation, consists usually of inherited inclinations, educational bias, individual interests, friendships, pride of relatives, the world's keen- eyed supervision, and the private ambition to be commended and successful. The control of situation over character may be illustrated in a variety of ways, but it can be said in a single sentence that the law of self-interest is subverting and twisting many of the noblest attributes of human disposition, and that under the despotic sway of custom the individual, though perhaps well organised and educated for a straightforward and noble existence, is rendered weak in principle and hypocritical in conduct by means of his circumstances.
We come now to the question of cure, and the Harmonial Philosophy would institute three practical methods: (1) A school of prevention, (2) a system of
palliation, and (3) a work of reformation. We require a school of prevention to teach that the true Saviour is within each human body. His name is Wisdom and his manifestation is Harmony. To prevent the development of evil from deranged conditions, Society must give to its children—the fathers and mothers of the future— an education in the sphere of physical laws and spiritual principles. Immortal ideas and fixed principles should be grafted in the young mind as the only foundation of scientific and moral improvement. Upon no other ground can we expect a generation of noble men and worthy women, who—by harmonial marriages—will bestow upon the world the unfading glory of good offspring. There are, however, hydra-headed evils which no school of prevention can reach, and hence the necessity of doing some negative good by a system of palliation, including charities, methods of wholesome restraint and philanthropic institutions. As regards reformation, the Harmonial School proposes constructive work, based upon the eternal principles of association, progression and development, to prevent evil, vice and misery. We hold this possible only through the divine energy of immortal ideas, awakened by means of polytechnic institutions and impartial periodicals under the control of cultured and harmonious minds. My faith is unbounded in humanity's power to help itself, when purified by experience and exalted by unfolded reason. But the world is replete with lofty impulses which defeat themselves because they are apart from wisdom, and with local rivalries which crucify the helpless and innocent, apart from evil intention. My spiritual rest is perfect upon the bosom of Father God's immutable laws, and I hold that the world would receive more universal good from twelve healthy and energetic minds—in pure love with each other through harmonious perception of those Divine Laws—than from all the millions who have no such redemptive faith as a basis of action, A few minds
animated as one man with the universal sweep of ideas could revolutionise the globe. Progressive wisdom in a few minds may harmonise the nations. To insure a speedier prevention of evils and a reformation of the masses, to accelerate emancipation from the ills that distract and deform society, let the wisest and noblest men and women adopt the fixed laws of association, progression and development. By this is not meant that man's faith in fixed laws is essential to the works that he may achieve. He may know and believe nothing, but even in miserable darkness he still floats forward upon life-currents of the universe toward the far-off era of ultimate redemption.1 He might have hastened the birth of harmony in his soul, have diminished the woe of others and multiplied the recipients of happiness: yet he floats onward. But let the children of earth be educated in the glory and grandeur of the eternal principles of God; let them be stimulated systematically to examine the divine revelations of Nature; let their spiritual hearts be encouraged to beat responsive to angel breathings and holy harmonies of creation; let them be taught to rise above social discords, the oppressive antagonisms of sense; and then behold with what speed will spread everywhere the Harmonial Religion of Universal Justice.