26. For it is a fact that, during the course of time, man has been subjected to an ever increasing development from a stage of lesser perfection to a stage of greater perfection, and that his powers of observation have become greater and greater, making him skilful in distinguishing more and more the difference between evil and good, by which processes mankind will correspondingly gain more and more territory in the domain of the good. This again is the same as saying that the dividing line between evil and good is constantly on the move, so that the area of evil becomes smaller and smaller. People will then sometimes discover that much of what they previously thought the work of the Devil was, in fact, the work of God. One can see examples of this by looking back at the laws and their sentences in the past, and how, in the name of the good, justification was found for ruthlessness and for the use of gruesome instruments of torture, spreading terror and death all around for actions which today - because of a greater ability to distinguish between good and evil - one would consider as mere trifles, but at that time were found to be terrible misdeeds and devilry. In the same way mankind in the future will shudder at the thought of many of our manifestations of today, such as war and bodily injuries, vivisection, the death penalty, meat-eating, hunting and fishing, all of which are most definitely animal-like manifestations which will become more and more impossible for the individual to practise as his faculties of feeling, intelligence and intuition begin to grow and his present latent cosmic organs develop.