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
- ↑ Chapter xiv. This conclusion is somewhat modified in Chapter xxvii., but, for the sake of clearness, I state it here unconditionally. The reader can correct afterwards, so far as is required, the results of the present chapter.
