es.

It is also true that no one of Nature's methods of extinction is
pleasant {52} to those connected with the victim. The thief or thug,
prematurely dying with delirium tremens, is certainly quite as bearable
a sight to those before whose eyes it may come as the spectacle of a
virtuous man, the sole support of his family, slowly wasting away with
consumption in spite of all that loving service and agonizing sympathy
can do to retain for him a life that is of so much value.

------

TO the next objection that the practice of vice is not invariably
suicidal, since many rascals live to attain as {53} green an old age
as the most righteous, it is sufficient to say that plentiful as these
exceptions may occasionally seem, their proportion to the whole number
is at least as small as that of the exceptions to any other general law
of biology.

The policeman on the next corner will bear decided testimony that the
number of scoundrels who survive their 30th year is astonishingly small,
and he can point out any number of erstwhile troublesome members of
the community who are ending their lives in penitentiary, poorhouse, or
hospital at an age when well-behaved men are {54} just entering upon the
serious business of life.

It is also demonstrable that the proportion of vicious men to the
whole population is much less to-day than at any previous period in the
history of the race. This shows conclusively the improvement of society
by the self-destructiveness of vice. The proportion of bad men is
rapidly diminishing, because bad men die sooner and propagate fewer than
good ones. {55}

------

SCIENCE is incredulous of any relation between religion and natural
laws. Yet it is true now as said thirty centuries ago that--

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
A good understanding have they who keep his commandments."

From the Ten Commandments on, all religions have been the best
efforts of their founders and supporters to put man in accord with his
environment. This is their essence, though too frequently obscured by
the political, theological, and social aspects given them.

While some religions are much better than others, every man gets as {56}
good a religion and as much of it as he has capacity for. Nothing
has been more clearly demonstrated by thousands of years of strenuous
missionary effort than this fact.

Furthermore, any religion is better than no