The next cause of wrong action is those social influences of other minds that have most power both in securing and sustaining right action. In the previous chapter we have illustrated the power of the principles of _love_, _gratitude_, _sympathy_, and _example_ in securing right action.
The same powerful influences exist in reference to wrong action. The child who loves its parents and playmates is not only taught to believe wrong action to be right, but has all the powerful influences which example, sympathy, love, and gratitude can combine to lead to the same wrong courses. Thus, to the natural ignorance of inexperienced mind, to false instructions, and to bad habits, are often added these most powerful of all influences.
The next cause of wrong action is the want of a ruling purpose to do right. It has been shown that all the powers of the intellect and all the susceptibilities can be regulated by a generic ruling purpose, and that it is impossible, according to the nature of mind, to regulate it any other way.
When such a purpose exists, and its object is _any_ other except the right and true one, it is as impossible for a mind to act right as it is for a machine to fulfill its design when the main wheel is turned the wrong way.
That such a purpose does not exist in the new-born mind, and that it must be a considerable time before it is possible, in the nature of things, to be originated, needs no attempt to illustrate. Such a purpose is dependent on knowledge of truth, on habits, and these on the character of the educators of mind, and on other surrounding social influences.
These are the chief causes of the wrong action of mind as they have been developed by experience.
In the next chapters we shall consider the results of the wrong action of mind as they have been exhibited in the experience of mankind, and as they are to be anticipated in a future world.
WRONG ACTION OF MIND, AND ITS RESULTS IN THIS LIFE.
We have examined into the causes of the wrong action of mind, and have found them to consist in the want of knowledge, want of habits, want of social influences from other minds, and want of a right governing purpose, all of which, so far as reason and experience teach, alone could be secured by perfect and infallible teachers and educators in a perfect commonwealth.
