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
