The principle is that evil by definition is a falling short in good, and good cannot be at full strength in this Sphere where it is lodged in the alien : the good here is in something else, in something distinct from the Good, and this something else constitutes the falling short for it is not good. And this is why evil is ineradicable : there is, first, the fact that in relation to this principle of Good, thing will always stand less than thing, and, besides, all things come into being through it, and are what they are by standing away from it.
As for the disregard of desert — the good afflicted, the unworthy thriving — it is a sound explanation no doubt that to the good nothing is evil and to the evil nothing can be good : still the question remains why should what essentially offends our nature fall to the good while the wicked enjoy all it demands ? How can such an allotment be approved ?
No doubt since pleasant conditions add nothing to true happiness and the unpleasant do not lessen the evil in the wicked, the conditions matter little : as well complain that a good man happens to be ugly and a bad man handsome.
Still, under such a dispensation, there would surely be a propriety.
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a reasonableness, a regard to merit which, as things are, do not appear, though this would certainly be in keeping with the noblest Providence : even though external conditions do not affect a man’s hold upon good or evil, none the less it would seem utterly unfitting that the bad should be the masters, be sovereign in the state, while honourable men are slaves : a wicked ruler may commit the most lawless acts ; and in war the worst men have a free hand and perpetrate every kind of crime against their prisoners.
We are forced to ask how such things can be, under a Providence. Certainly a maker must consider his work as a whole, but none the less he should see to the due ordering of all the parts, especially when these parts have Soul, that is, are Living and Reasoning Beings : the Provi- dence must reach to all the details ; its functioning must consist in neglecting no point.
Holding, therefore, as we do, despite all, that the Universe lies under an Intellectual Principle whose power has touched every existent, we cannot be absolved from the attempt to show in what way the detail of this sphere is just.
A preliminary observation : in looking for excellence in this thing of mixture, the Kosmos, we cannot require all that is implied in the excellence of the unmingled ; it is folly to ask for Firsts in the Secondary, and since this Universe contains body, we must allow for some bodily influence upon the total and be thankful if the mingled existent lack nothing of what its nature allowed it to receive from the Divine Reason.
Thus, supposing we were enquiring for the finest type of the human being as known here, we would certainly not demand that he prove identical with Man as in the Divine Intellect ; we would think it enough in the Creator to have so brought this thing of flesh and nerve and bone under Reason as to give grace to these corporeal elements and to have made it possible for Reason to have contact with Matter.
Our progress towards the object of our investigation must begin
from this principle of gradation which will open to us the wonder of the Providence and of the power by which our universe holds its being.
We begin with evil acts entirely dependent upon the Souls which perpetrate them — the harm, for example, which perverted Souls do to the good and to each other. Unless the fore-planning power alone is to be charged with the vice in such Souls, we have no ground of accusation, no claim to redress : the blame lies on the Soul exercising its choice. Even a Soul, we have seen, must have its individual movement ; it is not abstract Spirit ; the first step towards animal life has been taken and the conduct will naturally be in keeping with that character.
It is not because the world existed that Souls are here ; before the world was, they had it in them to be of the world, to concern themselves with it, to presuppose it, to administer it : it was in their nature to produce it — by whatever method, whether by giving forth some emana- tion while they themselves remained above, or by an actual descent, or in both ways together, some presiding from above, others descending ; for we are not at the moment concerned about the mode of creation but are simply urging that, however the world was produced, no blame falls on Providence for what exists within it.
There remains the other phase of the question^ — the distribution of evil to the opposite classes of men : the good go bare while the wicked are rich : all that human need demands, the least deserving have in abundance ; it is they that rule ; peoples and states are at their disposal. Would not all this imply that the divine power does not reach to earth ?
That it does is sufficiently established by the fact that Reason rules in the lower things : animals and plants have their share in Reason, Soul and Life.
Perhaps, then, it reaches to earth but is not master over all ?
We answer that the universe is one living organism : as well maintain that while human head and face are the work of nature and of the ruling reason-principle, the rest of the frame is due to other agencies — accident or sheer necessity — and owes its inferiority to this origin, or to the incompetence of unaided N ature. And even granting that
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those less noble members are not in themselves admirable it would still be neither pious nor even reverent to censure the entire structure.
Thus we come to our enquiry as to the degree of excellence found in things of this Sphere, and how far they belong to an ordered system or in what degree they are, at least, not evil.
Now in every living being the upper parts — head, face — are the most beautiful, the mid and lower members inferior. In the Universe the middle and lower members are human beings ; above them, the Heavens and the Gods that dwell there ; these Gods with the entire circling expanse of the heavens constitute the greater part of the Kosmos : the earth is but a central point, and may be considered as simply one among the stars. Yet human wrong-doing is made a matter of wonder ; we are evidently asked to take humanity as the choice member of the Universe, nothing wiser existent !
But humanity, in reality, is poised midway between gods and beasts, and inclines now to the one order, now to the other ; some men grow like to the divine, others to the brute, the greater number stand neutral. But those that are corrupted to the point of approximating to irrational animals and wild beasts pull the mid-folk about and inflict wrong upon them ; the victims are no doubt better than the wrong- doers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they themselves are inferior, where, that is, they cannot be classed among the good since they have not trained themselves in self-defence.
A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh ?
And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indul- gence : the gymnasium lies there before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness, have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves.
But the evil-doers also have their punishment : hrst they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster to their human quality : and next there is laid up for them the due of their Kind ; living ill here, they will not get off by death ; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural — worse to the bad, better to the good.
This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys ; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves — and the duly armed win the day.
Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike; the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men, not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling ; healthy days are not for those that neglect their health : we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.
Again : it is childish, while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard to the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go on living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life — then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil.
Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled : and this is just ; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.
It would not be just, because Providence cannot be a something reducing us to nothingness : to think of Providence as everything, with no other thing in existence, is to annihilate the Universe ; such a providence could have no field of action ; nothing would exist except the Divine. As things are, the Divine, of course, exists, but has reached
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forth to something other — not to reduce that to nothingness but to preside over it ; thus in the case of Man, for instance, the Divine presides as the Providence, preserving the character of human nature, that is the character of a being under the providential law, which, again, implies subjection to what that law may enjoin.
And that law enjoins that those who have made themselves good shall know the best of life, here and later, the bad the reverse. But the law does not warrant the wicked in expecting that their prayers should bring others to sacrifice themselves for their sakes ; or that the gods should lay aside the divine life in order to direct their daily concerns ; or that good men, who have chosen a path nobler than all earthly rule, should become their rulers. The perverse have never made a single effort to bring the good into authority, nor do they take any steps to improve themselves ; they are aU spite against anyone that becomes good of his own motion, though if good men were placed in authority the total of goodness would be increased.
In sum ; Man has come into existence, a living being but not a member of the noblest order ; he occupies by choice an intermediate rank ; still, in that place in which he exists. Providence does not allow him to be reduced to nothing ; on the contrary he is ever being led upwards by all those varied devices which the Divine employs in its labour to increase the dominance of moral value. The human race, therefore, is not deprived by Providence of its rational being ; it retains its share, though neces- sarily limited, in wisdom, intelligence, executive power and right doing, the right doing, at least, of individuals to each other — and even in wronging others people think they are doing right and only pa3ung what is due.
Maji is, therefore, a noble creation, as perfect as the scheme allows ; a part, no doubt, in the fabric of the All, he yet holds a lot higher than that of all the other living things of earth.