Still more recently has been developed the system of Phrenology, which is based on the _constitutional diversities_ in mental faculties. This system has effectively warred on the theological theory of implanted evil propensities, by teaching that every faculty, when developed and regulated aright, tends to the best good of the race, so that the extinction of any faculty or propensity would not be an improvement, but rather an injury to the constitution of mind. At the same time, by the influence of our schools, our colleges, our pulpits, our popular lectures and our wide‐spread periodicals, both religious and secular, the mind of all classes has been rising to a larger development, and to clearer and more discriminating views of mental and moral science in every department. Thus the people are gradually throwing off the chains of ecclesiastical authority and assuming that liberty of thought and action, which their Almighty Father designed as the chief birth‐right of all his intelligent offspring. CHAPTER XLIII. PRACTICAL TENDENCIES OF THE TWO SYSTEMS. In the preceding pages it has been shown that the common‐sense system presents an intelligible, practical and consistent standard of right and wrong, by which we can judge clearly of the character and conduct, both of the Creator and of his creatures. The mind of the Creator existing from all eternity, independently of his own will, is the pattern of perfectness in the construction of mind. He has formed and sustains a system fitted to his own perfections. The chief end of this system is happiness‐making on the greatest possible scale. In order to this, his _laws_, by which the most possible good with the least possible evil will be secured, must be discovered and obeyed. Accordingly, all that tends to secure happiness without evil is right, and all that needlessly lessens or destroys happiness is wrong. Every effort to discover the laws of God and to obey them is right and pleasing to him as promoting his chief desire and great end. This view furnishes a foundation for clear conceptions in every practical question of right and wrong. What is _for the best_ as discovered by reason and experience? This is the great question, when we have no direct revelation from God. And even when revelation intervenes, it must be only in regard to _general rules_, leaving it still a matter of experience and discussion in _applying_ these rules to the multitudes of varying cases in human experience. Thus, for example, a command to be honest toward all, leaves innumerable questions to be settled as to what _is_ honest and fair in the multiplied cases arising between man and man. But we always have the great principle of common sense to guide us, that _whatever is for the best is right_, leaving it for reason and experience to settle what is and what is not for the best. But in contrast the Augustinian system, in many ways, tends to becloud the mind in regard to practical questions of right and wrong.