Article January 1, 1910 Issue

REFORM

M. G. KAINS, M.S.

The most important reforms that have marked the history of the human race have always had their inception in individual recognition of and tenacious adherence to right, to Principle. They have made progress solely along the line of individual right thinking upon this basis, and the only barrier they have had to surmount has been the momentum of individual incorrect thinking. In the last analysis the conflict has been between correct and incorrect thinking in individual consciousness. Since right thinking is fatal to wrong thinking, the outcome has invariably been the same: right thinking always has triumphed and always will. Such, in the abstract, is the past, present, and future of reform, whether the subject be confined to the individual or extended to the human race.

If these statements are true,—and they are,—it is evident that individual reform, or rather individual conformation to the demands of Principle, is of fundamental importance. It can come only as the individual recognizes and acts upon the necessity of bringing his thoughts and deeds into harmony with the basic law of improvement in whatsoever direction that law may dictate, even though it may insist upon a right-about-face and the apparent loss of position, prestige, power, and perquisites. Fear to comply with such a demand must be met and mastered, or one cannot retain his own self-respect and the esteem of others. It is characteristic of the noble-minded to act in this way; to seek, rather than be forced into, a rectification of errors. To ignore the mandate is to reveal laxness; to spurn it is to uncover arrogance; to defy it is to proclaim one's self a foe to right thinking; deliberately to misinterpret it for the purpose of erroneously influencing others, reveals a condition of turpitude which verges upon moral idiocy.

All these and many other forms of silencing conscience have their basis in ignorance or in fear. Ignorance can be readily dispelled, but the person who refuses to reform always does so because of cowardice. Whatever may be the course that fear prompts, whether erroneous action or erroneous inaction, the very result feared is manifested sooner or later. There is no use in temporizing, no use in trying to strangle truth; the downfall of erroneous thinking and its votaries and the ultimate establishment of correct thinking and its adherents is inevitable. Reform deals primarily not with persons but with Principle. With equal impartiality, it rewards those who adhere to it and punishes those who reject it.

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