But, I ask, does it really atone? Is it not rather the case that if there be the least taint in the part, the whole falls short of perfection? It is true that we regard a slight defect as practically negligible. Because our experience seldom, if ever, shows us anything quite free from flaw, we accept with glad thankfulness that in which the good seems far to outweigh the evil, feeling that in the face of so much excellence it would be carping to allow our thought to dwell upon the defect. None the less, sober judgment must admit that the evil of the part is ignored rather than destroyed. Now what I am trying to bring out is the difference in this respect between an existing whole and a whole that comes to be. An existing whole cannot be completely good unless each of its simultaneously existing parts is good. But a whole that comes to be, might be completely good in spite of the fact that some of its (serial) parts were bad. It will always be true, if you like, that certain of the earlier stages were evil. But when they have grown into the final stage, they have become good.[1]
I repeat then that if the temporal process be unreal, I can see no way in which the evil of some parts can be in the least degree atoned for by the excellence of the whole. There are indeed many who would try to escape from this conclusion by declaring that evil is illusory, but this theory offers no safe refuge. The definitive answer to all attempts to deny the reality of evil has been made by Dr. McTaggart, for one, in his paper on "The Relation of Time and Eternity."[2] To the assertion that evil is mere illusion we must reply, he says, that in such case the (undeniable) existence of the erroneous belief in it would itself be an evil.[3]
It is equally futile to try to avoid the difficulty by saying that evil is merely incompleteness. Evil is absence of value, lack of that which ought to be. And if it is this, it is not mere incom-
- ↑ Another point that might be urged is that in a whole whose parts are co-existent with it we can ignore the evil of some parts only if this is slight in comparison with the excellence of the whole. But in a human life, taken as what I may call a serial whole, the case seems to be different. A considerable amount of pain or intellectual or moral defect in the earlier stages is atoned for if the later stages are good.
- ↑ Mind, N. S., Vol. XVIII, pp. 343 ff.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 360.
