Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/206

Rh abnormal action: that is; folly, injustice, error, sin—if you choose to call it so. Put all man's moral misdemeanours together, and call them by one name—Vice. They are most conveniently dealt with if put into a basket with a single handle. This amount of abnormal action, other things being equal, will diminish in proportion to the correctness of the man's ideal of life; and in proportion to the strength and earnestness of his efforts to make his ideal the actual fact of his life: or it will increase in proportion to the falseness of his ideal, and the feebleness of his efforts to make it the actual fact of his life. Vice is a variable, capable of being enlarged or lessened.

In all nations, likewise, there is a variable percentage of moral error—Vice. Other things being equal, this abnormal quantity will commonly depend on five causes.

First. On the amount of activity in the nation; a people that goes is more likely to go wrong than one that goes not; one which goes much, more than one which goes little.

Second. On the amount of property; for property represents power over Nature, and this may be abused, directed wrong or right.

Third. On the difference in respect to property between the rich class and the poor class. Where this difference is immense, there is a vast quantity of vice; where the difference is small, the vice is little. Fourth. On the ideas which men of genius, culture, and station, spread abroad amongst the people as their rule of life; on the institutions and laws. Where these are good, vice will continually diminish; where bad, progressively multiply. National institutions, conduct, character, resemble the popular ideas as plants grow from the seed.

Fifth, On the pains taken to remove the causes of wrong,—the circumstances which occasion it; an attempt to remove ignorance, alleviate want, cure drunkenness, end prostitution; on the pains taken to comfort, teach, and moralize mankind.

In France, England, part of Germany, and the free States of America, great pains are taken to diminish the amount of vice by removing some of its outward causes. Wise social philosophers look upon aU this abnormal action