The term “evil” is relative: dirt, for instance, is well known to be only matter out of place; weeds are plants flourishing where they are not wanted; there are no weeds in botany, there are weeds in gardening; even disease is only one organism growing at the expense of another; ugliness is non-existent save to creatures with a sense of beauty, and is due to unsuitable grouping. Analysed into its elements, every particle of matter must be a miracle of law and order, and, in that sense, of beauty.

Recent discoveries in connexion with the internal structure of an atom, whereby the constituent particles are found to move in intricate and ascertainable orbits—leading to a new science of atomic astronomy—emphasise this assertion to an extent barely credible ten years ago.

Even what can be called filth—that is to say material which, to the casual observer, or when encountered at unsuitable times, is disgusting—may to an investigator, or under other circumstances, be of the highest interest; and may even arouse a sense of admiration, by reason of manifest subservience to function.

Many social evils are due to human folly and stupidity, and will cease when the race has risen to a standard already attained by individuals.

Excessive hunger and starvation are manifestly evils of a negative character: they are merely a deficiency of supply: they have no business to exist in a civilised and organised community. Famine and pestilence can be checked by applications of science.

Pain is an awful reality, when highly developed organisms are subjected to wounds and poison and disease. Some kinds of pain have been wickedly inflicted by human beings on each other in the past, and other kinds may be removed or mitigated by the progress of discovery in the future. Physiologically the nerve processes involved are well worthy of study and control. Premature avoidance of pain would have been dangerous to the race, and not really helpful to the individual: but great advances in this direction are now foreshadowed. Already surgical operations can be conducted painlessly; and a time is foreshadowed when, through hypnosis, excessive and useless torture can be shut off from consciousness, by intelligence and will; somewhat as the random leakage of an electric supply can be checked. All this will come in due time:

The contrast between good and evil can be well illustrated by the contrast between heat and cold. Cold is only the absence of heat, and is made at once possible and necessary by the existence of degrees of heat. The fact that we regard excessive cold as an evil is only because our organisation demands a certain temperature for life; there is nothing evil about cold in itself: it is only evil in its relation to organisms sufficiently high to be damaged by it. The real fact is their normally high temperature, and their delicacy of response to stimuli. These things are good; and the only evil is a defect or deficiency of these good things.

Every rise involves the possibility of fall. Every advance seems to entail a corresponding penalty.

The power of assimilating food leaves the organism open to the pangs of hunger, that is, of insufficient nutriment,—manifestly only the absence of a good.

In a world devoid of life there is no death; in a world without conscious beings there is no sin. In a world without affection there would be no grief; and to a larger vision much of our grief may be needless:—

A mechanical universe might be perfectly good. Every atom of matter perfectly obeys the forces acting upon it, and there is no error or wickedness or fault or rebellion in lifeless nature. Evil only begins when existence takes a higher turn. There is not even destruction or death in the inorganic world—only transformation. The higher possibility called life entails the correlative evils called death and disease. The possibility of keen sensation, which permits pleasure, also involves capacity for the corresponding penalty called pain: but the pain is in ourselves, and is the result of our sensitiveness combined with imperfection.

The still higher attribute of conscious striving after holiness, which must be the prerogative of free agents capable of virtue or purposed good, and marks so enormous a rise in the scale of creation,—involves the possibility that beings so endowed may fall from their high level, and, by definitely applying themselves to harm instead of good, may abuse their high power and suffer the penalty called sin; but the evil in all cases is a warped or distorted good, and has reference to the higher beings which are now in existence.

Some further idea of the necessity for evil can be conveyed as follows:—

Contrast is an inevitable attribute of reality. Sickness is the negative and opposite of health: without sickness we should not be aware what health was. There is no sickness in inorganic nature; yet, even there, contrast is the essence of existence. Everything that is must be surrounded by regions where it is not. There is no stupid infinity, or absence of boundaries, about existing things,—however infinite their totality may be,—no absence of limitation, either of perfection or of anything else. Existence involves limitation. A tree that is here is excluded from being everywhere else. Goodness would have no meaning if badness were impossible or non-existent.

We are not machines or automata, but free and conscious and active agents, and so must contend with evil as well as rejoice in good. Conflict and difficulty are essential for our training and development: even for our existence at this grade. With their aid we have become what we are; without them we should vegetate and degenerate; whereas the will of the Universe is that we arise and walk.