Appearance and Reality/Chapter XVII
CHAPTER XVII.
EVIL.
We have seen that error is compatible with absolute perfection, and we now must try to reach the same result in the case of evil. Evil is a problem which of course presents serious difficulties, but the worst have been imported into it and rest on pure mistake. It is here, as it is also with what is called “Free Will.” The trouble has come from the idea that the Absolute is a moral person. If you start from that basis, then the relation of evil to the Absolute presents at once an irreducible dilemma. The problem then becomes insoluble, but not because it is obscure or in any way mysterious. To any one who has sense and courage to see things as they are, and is resolved not to mystify others or himself, there is really no question to discuss. The dilemma is plainly insoluble because it is based on a clear self-contradiction, and the discussion of it here would be quite uninstructive. It would concern us only if we had reason to suppose that the Absolute is (properly) moral. But we have no such reason, and hereafter we may hope to convince ourselves (Chapter xxv.), that morality cannot (as such) be ascribed to the Absolute. And, with this, the problem becomes certainly no worse than many others. Hence I would invite the reader to dismiss all hesitation and misgiving. If the questions we ask prove unanswerable, that will certainly not be because they are quite obscure or unintelligible. It will be simply because the data we possess are insufficient. But let us at all events try to understand what it is that we seek.
Evil has, we all know, several meanings. It may be taken (I.) as pain, (II.) as failure to realize end, and (III.), specially, as immorality. The fuller consideration of the last point must be postponed to a later chapter, where we can deal better with the relation of the finite person to the Absolute.
I. No one of course can deny that pain actually exists, and I at least should not dream of denying that it is evil. But we failed to see, on the other hand, how pain, as such, can possibly exist in the Absolute.[1] Hence, it being admitted that pain has actual existence, the question is whether its nature can be transmuted. Can its painfulness disappear in a higher unity? If so, it will exist, but will have ceased to be pain when considered on the whole.
We can to some extent verify in our actual experience the neutralization of pain. It is quite certain that small pains are often wholly swallowed up in a larger composite pleasure. And the assertion that, in all these cases, they have been destroyed and not merged, would most certainly be baseless. To suppose that my condition is never pleasant on the whole while I still have an actual local pain, is directly opposed to fact. In a composite state the pain doubtless will detract from the pleasure, but still we may have a resultant which is pleasurable wholly. Such a balance is all that we want in the case of absolute perfection.
We shall certainly so far have done nothing to confute the pessimist. “I accept,” he will reply, “your conclusion in general as to the existence of a balance. I quite agree that in the resultant one feature is submerged. But, unfortunately for your view, that feature really is not pain but pleasure. The universe, taken as a whole, suffers therefore sheer pain and is hence utterly evil.” But I do not propose to undertake here an examination of pessimism. That would consist largely in the weighing of psychological arguments on either side, and the result of these is in my opinion fatal to pessimism. In the world, which we observe, an impartial scrutiny will discover more pleasure than pain, though it is difficult to estimate, and easy to exaggerate, the amount of the balance. Still I must confess that, apart from this, I should hold to my conclusion. I should still believe that in the universe there is preponderance of pleasure. The presumption in its favour is based on a principle from which I see no escape (Chapter xiv.), while the world we see is probably a very small part of the reality. Our general principle must therefore be allowed to weigh down a great deal of particular appearance; and, if it were necessary, I would without scruple rest my case on this argument. But, on the contrary, no such necessity exists. The observed facts are clearly, on the whole, in favour of some balance of pleasure. They, in the main, serve to support our conclusion from principle, and pessimism may, without hesitation, be dismissed.
We have found, so far, that there is a possibility of pain ceasing, as such, to exist in the Absolute. We have shown that this possibility can to some extent be verified in experience. And we have a general presumption in favour of an actual balance of pleasure. Hence once more here, as before with error, possibility is enough. For what may be, if it also must be, assuredly is.
There are readers, perhaps, who will desire to go farther. It might be urged that in the Absolute pain not merely is lost, but actually serves as a kind of stimulus to heighten the pleasure. And doubtless this possibly may be the case; but I can see no good reason for taking it as fact. In the Absolute there probably is no pleasure outside of finite souls (Chapter xxvii.); and we have no reason to suppose that those we do not see are happier than those which we know. Hence, though this is possible, we are not justified in asserting it as more. For we have no right to go farther than our principle requires. But, if there is a balance of clear pleasure, that principle is satisfied, for nothing then stands in the way of the Absolute’s perfection. It is a mistake to think that perfection is made more perfect by increase of quantity (Chapter xx.).
II. Let us go on to consider evil as waste, failure, and confusion. The whole world seems to a large extent the sport of mere accident. Nature and our life show a struggle in which one end perhaps is realized, and a hundred are frustrated. This is an old complaint, but it meets an answer in an opposing doubt. Is there really any such thing as an end in Nature at all? For, if not, clearly there is no evil, in the sense in which at present we are taking the word. But we must postpone the discussion of this doubt until we have gained some understanding of what Nature is to mean.[2] I will for the present admit the point of view which first supposes ends in Nature, and then objects that they are failures. And I think that this objection is not hard to dispose of. The ends which fail, we may reply, are ends selected by ourselves and selected more or less erroneously. They are too partial, as we have taken them, and, if included in a larger end to which they are relative, they cease to be failures. They, in short, subserve a wider scheme, and in that they are realized. It is here with evil as it was before with error. That was lost in higher truth to which it was subordinate, and in which, as such, it vanished. And with partial ends, in Nature or in human lives, the same principle will hold. Idea and existence we find not to agree, and this discord we call evil. But, when these two sides are enlarged and each taken more widely, both may well come together. I do not mean, of course, that every finite end, as such, is realized. I mean that it is lost, and becomes an element, in a wider idea which is one with existence. And, as with error, even our onesidedness, our insistence and our disappointment, may somehow all subserve a harmony and go to perfect it. The aspects of idea and of existence may be united in one great whole, in which evil, and even ends, as such, disappear. To verify this consummation, or even to see how in detail it can be, is alike impossible. But, for all that, such perfection in its general idea is intelligible and possible. And, because the Absolute is perfect, this harmony must also exist. For that which is both possible and necessary we are bound to think real.
III. Moral evil presents us with further difficulties. Here it is not a question simply of defect, and of the failure in outward existence of that inner idea which we take as the end. We are concerned further with a positive strife and opposition. We have an idea in a subject, an end which strives to gain reality; and on the other side, we have the existence of the same subject. This existence not merely fails to correspond, but struggles adversely, and the collision is felt as such. In our moral experience we find this whole fact given beyond question. We suffer within ourselves a contest of the good and bad wills and a certainty of evil. Nay, if we please, we may add that this discord is necessary, since without it morality must wholly perish.
And this necessity of discord shows the road into the centre of our problem. Moral evil exists only in moral experience, and that experience in its essence is full of inconsistency. For morality desires unconsciously, with the suppression of evil, to become wholly non-moral. It certainly would shrink from this end, but it thus unknowingly desires the existence and perpetuity of evil. I shall have to return later to this subject (Chapter xxv.), and for the present we need keep hold merely of this one point. Morality itself, which makes evil, desires in evil to remove a condition of its own being. It labours essentially to pass into a super-moral and therefore a non-moral sphere.
But, if we will follow it and will frankly adopt this tendency, we may dispose of our difficulty. For the content, willed as evil and in opposition to the good, can enter as an element into a wider arrangement. Evil, as we say (usually without meaning it), is overruled and subserves. It is enlisted and it plays a part in a higher good end, and in this sense, unknowingly is good. Whether and how far it is as good as the will which is moral, is a question later to be discussed. All that we need understand here is that “Heaven’s design,” if we may speak so, can realize itself as effectively in “Catiline or Borgia” as in the scrupulous or innocent. For the higher end is super-moral, and our moral end here has been confined, and is therefore incomplete. As before with physical evil, the discord as such disappears, if the harmony is made wide enough.
But it will be said truly that in moral evil we have something additional. We have not the mere fact of incomplete ends and their isolation, but we have in addition a positive felt collision in the self. And this cannot be explained away, for it has to fall within the Absolute, and it makes there a discord which remains unresolved. But our old principle may still serve to remove this objection. The collision and the strife may be an element in some fuller realization. Just as in a machine the resistance and pressure of the parts subserve an end beyond any of them, if regarded by itself—so at a much higher level it may be with the Absolute. Not only the collision but that specific feeling, by which it is accompanied and aggravated, can be taken up into an all-inclusive perfection. We do not know how this is done, and ingenious metaphors (if we could find them) would not serve to explain it. For the explanation would tend to wear the form of qualities in relation, a form necessarily (as we have seen) transcended in the Absolute. Such a perfect way of existence would, however, reconcile our jarring discords; and I do not see how we can deny that such a harmony is possible. But, if possible, then, as before, it is indubitably real. For, on the one side, we have an overpowering reason for maintaining it; while upon the other side, so far as I can see, we have nothing.
I will mention in passing another point, the unique sense of personality which is felt strongly in evil. But I must defer its consideration until we attack the problem of the “mine” and the “this” (Chapter xix.). And I will end here with some words on another source of danger. There is a warning which I may be allowed to impress on the reader. We have used several times already with diverse subject-matters the same form of argument. All differences, we have urged repeatedly, come together in the Absolute. In this, how we do not know, all distinctions are fused, and all relations disappear. And there is an objection which may probably at some point have seemed plausible. “Yes,” I may be told, “it is too true that all difference is gone. First with one real existence, and then afterwards with another, the old argument is brought out and the old formula applied. There is no variety in the solution, and hence in each case the variety is lost to the Absolute. Along with these distinctions all character has wholly disappeared, and the Absolute stands outside, an empty residue and bare Thing-in-itself.” This would be a serious misunderstanding. It is true that we do not know how the Absolute overrides the relational form. But it does not follow from this that, when the relational form is gone, the result is really poorer. It is true that with each problem we cannot say how its special discords are harmonized. But is this to deny the reality of diverse contents in the Absolute? Because in detail we cannot tell in what each solution consists, are we therefore driven to assert that all the detail is abolished, and that our Absolute is a flat monotony of emptiness? This would indeed be illogical. For though we do not know in each case what the solution can be, we know that in every case it contains the whole of the variety. We do not know how all these partial unities come together in the Absolute, but we may be sure that the content of not one is obliterated. The Absolute is the richer for every discord, and for all diversity which it embraces; and it is our ignorance only in which consists the poverty of our object. Our knowledge must be poor because it is abstract. We cannot specify the concrete nature of the Absolute’s riches, but with every region of phenomenal existence we can say that it possesses so much more treasure. Objections and problems, one after the other, are not shelved merely, but each is laid up as a positive increase of character in the reality. Thus a man might be ignorant of the exact shape in which his goods have been realized, and yet he might be rationally assured that, with each fresh alienation of visible property, he has somehow corresponding wealth in a superior form.