higher life. It breeds in man the qualities of strenuous effort, toil, courage, strength, and sacrifice. Courageous fight to vanquish evil builds character. Facing aggressive evil with fortitude, fighting temptations, and overcoming evil is progressive ascent towards individual perfection.
Man's duty to resist evil in society. As it is with the individual so it is with society. Social life opens with animal instincts and evolves toward human traits. Every man is an ally of every other man against the common enemy, evil. When they play human they co-operate with their comrades in the task ordained for them by Ahura Mazda. In their forgetful moments, when they throw down their human vesture and lapse into their animal state, they miss their mark. Instead of fighting the enemy of man, they fight men, and tear them with mad fury. Every man's hand, then, is against every man individually, as every nation's hand is against every nation collectively. Rather than follow the demands of the moral world, to wage war with evil, they continue the practice of the physical world, the war of the strong against the weak. At all times they fight beyond their homeland, sometimes they fight in their homes. Dogs living in the same yard are friends all day, but turn into foes at meal hour. So are men, friendly and fondling in their human nature, but snarling at each other, like dogs, when the animal in them emerges on the surface. Society has always had its parasites, who live on theft and plunder, rapine and bloodshed. So will it be until that time, in distant ages to come, when society, by human effort for betterment, eventually reaches perfection. The animal in man will grow weak with time, and will be subdued. As society progresses in evolution, this baser element in man will be disabled by degrees. In perfect society it will be eliminated.
But society is yet imperfect in all phases of its life. It has its stray dogs and pouncing wolves and cunning serpents. They are menaces to its well-being, and vigorous resistance to their vicious propensities and evil doings is indispensable for the very life of society. In primitive society the work of redressing wrongs remains in the hands of aggrieved individuals, and as individuals are actuated by vengeance, hatred is met by hatred, blood is avenged by blood, and evil is repaid by evil. In organized society the right of redressing wrongs is taken from the individual. Society interferes, and in its authoritative position
