Page:The astral world, higher occult powers; (IA astralworldhighe00tiff).pdf/209

 injure your neighbor, we will injure you; if you kill your neighbor, we will kill you; and the same blow which you aim at your neighbor, we will cause to fall upon your own head. In this way this first kind of government takes advantage of man's selfishness to restrain him. It does not cause him to love his neighbor. It does not cause him, from his heart, to respect his neighbor's rights. It does not tend to lesson his selfishness or lust. It does not in any manner tend to make him more true, just, and pure at heart. It only restrains him from giving expression to his selfish and lustful desires.

So far as his motions to action are concerned, he is under the same impulse, whether he keep or break the law. He is as righteous at heart in violating its commandments as in observing its requirements. In either case he is governed by his judgment respecting that which pertains to his self-interest, and in keeping the law he is consulting his own gratification, and in violating it he is doing the same.

So far is this kind of government from tending to make the individual better at heart, that it not unfrequently makes him more selfish by intensifying his selfish feelings. The individual who is restrained from stealing through fear of punishment, and not from a love of justice, is a thief at heart, and will continue so notwithstanding the law says, "Thou shalt not steal," and by its penalties deters him from stealing. His neighbors may thank the law for its protection. But that is the end of its use. It will not improve the moral condition of its subject.

Such, then, is the nature and use of this just dispen