Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1352

1352. But since nothing can be born fully grown, neither mankind's perfect social order, the individuals' feeling of absolute interdependence nor the reciprocal feeling of complete brotherhood towards their neighbour can come into existence instantaneously and miraculously by dictatorship or command. This mental state, life's most perfect and absolutely most glorious art form, or this culmination of the manifestation of love cannot, on account of its greatness (no less than anything else can), come into existence unless through evolution, training and experience. When we look back on the history of mankind over the centuries, we therefore also see how mankind's humaneness, from being mere theory – seeds sown in and adapted to people's minds by prophets, wise men and world redeemers – must go through many different stages, and only after such a gradual evolution become increasingly fundamental to their daily lives. We have already dwelt on the ideals mentioned in "The Old Testament". We saw how "business morality" or the cultivation of the "false business principle" was a transitional stage between the open use of undisguised, coarse and brute force and the more hidden state, camouflaged and authorised as morality, that we today express as "modern culture". Today the Law of Moses, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth", is manifested in the form of our judicial legislative system and our administration of justice. The individuals' mutual urge to "punish" and "seek vengeance" is as yet so overwhelming that it must still be adjusted or authorised by the authorities so as not to find vent in sheer barbaric, violent anarchy. The desire to seize and possess our neighbour's goods and gold is still so dominant among terrestrial human beings that, in the face of this, one must protect oneself by employing the "concept of punishment" of the Law of Moses or "The Old Testament". Indeed, we even see here that this has been completely unable to overcome the coarse, animal primordial drive in the human being, which impels him to appropriate goods and comforts at any price, quite regardless of how much this may cost his surroundings or his neighbour in terms of loss of freedom and wellbeing. By camouflaging his seizure of his neighbour's goods, assets or property as "business", he thus kept open a channel or avenue by means of which he could continue to plunder and steal from his neighbour and still be described as an "honest man". Indeed, this camouflage developed so much that the camouflaged robbery and defrauding of his neighbour, as already mentioned repeatedly, actually became authorised and protected by law. And this authorisation became the foundation for the entire present civilisation of mankind.