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CHAPTER VI

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

AKE the Old Testament as a whole.

First

we have an attempt to solve the problem of existence the ancient and insoluble problem, how do things come to be. Why is it that anything at all exists?

Existence is attributed to the Word of God, the Logos. God spake. It is represented as the outcome of reason, design, and purpose; and, whether we take it in the first of Genesis or the first of John, we cannot get beyond that

even now.

Next it deals with the growth of enlightenment and the entrance of sin— the legend of man's first disobedience, that is of conscious disobedience. Sin appears as the result of knowledge, the result of a rise in development, the perception of good and evil, the consciousness of a power of choice. Nothing more was necessary than the attainment of that stage:

for when that stage was reached, by a being as yet imperfect, sin necessarily followed. Sin is a heavy price to pay for human progress, but it was inevitable, unless the aim was mere mechanical compulsory perfection. The aim is higher than that; and the conscious effort of humanity, then begun, still continues. We have to learn to do right because we will, not because we must. We are free agents. We can choose. We know good from evil.

The spirit of the legend is, as we have seen, entirely consistent with the doctrine of evolution; we see the same thing happening in an individual life. A baby scratches the eye of its brother-it does many things disgraceful to adults it is not held responsible. An age of innocence is far from a state of perfection. The nascent soul, like the nascent race, must pass through a period of struggle and conscious effort; it must develop its own will, and grow into the region of light and knowledge. But with that development the early innocence inevitably ceases, and the possibility of sin enters

sin, which is seeing the better and choosing the worse.

There is nothing that can be called an in

tellectual 'problem' about sin, it is a definite and positive reality. Given the possibility of evil, sin is easy to understand, and in so far as there is a problem, it is a problem in Humanity; humanum est errare. There is a problem of evil, which is quite a different thing;- that is a problem in Divinity, not in Humanity. The book of Genesis does not deal with that. It is a problem of later date, it is the subject of the poem which we know as the book of Job, and it is often referred to by the prophets. The problem of evil; - why was evil permitted to exist? why is there pain and suffering and death? what is meant by the far-off interest of tears'?—I do not know if children ask these questions, I think they belong to a more adult stage, but with certain persons the difficulty so raised is acute; and it has contributed before now to a kind of atheism, or, what is much the same thing, to pessimism.

Yet by a little clear thinking the difficulty disappears. The very fact that it is asked is a sign of latent optimism. In a truly pessimistic Universe there would be no problem of evil, there would be a problem of good,-no problem of sorrow, but a problem of joy. If

everything is as bad as it can be, how comes it that any happiness exists? What is the meaning of beauty, and love, and mutual help, and other forms of goodness? Are these things mere instruments of disguised torment? Are they not essentially good in themselves?

But these questions are not asked. These are not the difficulties that oppress humanity. We ask why is suffering permitted, and thereby imply that joy is the natural condition of life; the opposite is felt to be unnatural, or at least to require explanation.

An explanation is contained in the relativity of all existence; every existence must have its boundary and its negation, contrast and change are of the essence of our perceptions. Up would have no meaning if there were no down; Good would be unintelligible if there were no evil; Force would be unnecessary if there were no inertia.

Here is a point which demands and is worthy of some elaboration. To seize the meaning fully will require some effort. Exertion of force implies a reaction, it does not necessarily imply a resistance. The two are frequently confused, and hence has arisen Manichæism

and many many another outcome of confused thought. Action and Reaction are always equal and opposite, but the reaction may be caused in very different ways. A rope may be pulled because it is attached to a massive truck or canal barge, in order to make it advance. A rope may also be pulled because something animate is pulling in the opposite direction. In the latter case there is active resistance, competition, opposing force, obstruction. In the former case there need be no obstruction — nothing but inertia. The pull is just as hard, but there is no organized opposition; the reaction is dependent on the rate of advance, it is directly proportional to the acceleration. It is a sign of progress: it is dynamic, not static.

There are, therefore, two kinds of conflictthe active and the passive kind. Conflict against wilful opposition, on the one hand; conflict against inevitable and inherent difficulties, on the other.

There is a conflict of activity with sluggishness, for instance; and of this character is much Divine expenditure of energy; but it may be mistaken for a conflict with some opposing activity. I do not say that there are no op