bly it is because many people are following the same principle in
trying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make
such poor work of it.

Possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to
be, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moses
was a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the Ten
Commandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do any
more, and of one that they must.

Some of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hit
it off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, in
getting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one really
wants to do.

Moses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting people
concentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was not
conducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make the
people good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle that
would make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicable
principle for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. It
did not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has never
worked with people since.

It does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, to
point out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they
will be allowed to take hold, if they know how.

All that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groups
or classes of people who are especially not what they should be. The
people who never get on morally (as different as they may be in most
things and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion in
common. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful
person tries once more to get them to be good.

They say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be good
and cannot do it.

And this is not true.

When a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits down
and thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good at
all. He is trying to be not bad.

A man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being not
bad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other people
try to do it--those who are near him, and it is still, still harder for
a President down in Washington to do it.

An intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep
up an interest very long in