CHAPTER XIII.[ToC]
OUR CHANGED CONDITIONS.
The changed conditions of the race in these last years are urged as a sufficient reason for annulling this law. It is admitted that it was righteous and beneficent in ages long past but with the new light and new conditions of the present it is effete, inapplicable and unjust. They call attention to the vast extension of commerce, to the marvelously increased facilities for travel, transportation and intercommunication; to the innumerable and wonderful inventions that in their application have brightened our civilization. They exalt present conditions and they belittle the long past conditions and thought.
The prohibition of usury belonged to the past, the practice of usury is all but universal in the present, therefore they argue that usury is a part and a necessary part of our civilization and to revive the old prohibition would turn the world's civilization backward and be as absurd as to now dispense with steam or electricity.
In reply it may be said that the changes are not universal, that there are some things that abide, that the changes are trifling when compared with those things that remain and are permanent.
1. Human nature remains the same. Man, in body and mind, in physiology and psychology, has not changed in these thousands of years. That which in ages past promoted the health and vigor of his body, will secure its best development now. That discipline, culture and mental exercise that secured the highest intellectual strength in ages past will do the most for its best development now. Many things that now give splendor to our civilization do not promote either the best physical or mental manhood.
2. Family ties remain. The relation of husband and wife, of parents and children, and the duties of their several positions in the home have not changed. The family remains the social unit as it has been in all ages. Sociology, the science of social and political organization, is a permanent science. It does not change with the shifting temporal conditions of the people. Those things which made for the general welfare of ages ago are for the public weal now, and those things that endangered the state then are to be avoided now.
3. The moral law remains unchanged and unchangeable, with all the brilliant present there is no amendment to the ten commandments. The ethical nature remains and the voice of conscience, approving the same right and condemning the same wrong, is identical with the voice of conscience in the time of Moses.
4. The laws of nature have not changed. The relation between a cause and its sequence remains. Like causes produce like effects.
No living thing has changed its nature. A lion now is of the same nature that it was in the time of Samson. So with every savage beast that roams the jungle. Even the domesticated animals, with all the effort and skill of intelligent man, have only been smoothed or speeded a little. The horse, cow, sheep, or dog have held their old forms and dispositions.