I have not tried to state and criticize the numerous theodicies which man's restless intellect has constructed. Mystics have taught that evil is an { 165} illusion. But illusions have a way of being very real; and a derogatory term does not alter facts. Idealists have declared that what we call evil only increases the divine harmony, as a judicious discord heightens the effect of symphonic combinations. But this æsthetic argument conflicts with moral relations. Surely God would not be so self-centered. Thus there are weighty objections to all the ingenious and profound apologies for the course of events. But why are such apologies felt to be necessary? Simply and solely because events are assumed to be under the control of an intelligent, moral agent. Withdraw this assumption, and the problem vanishes.
When we turn from the religious view of the world to the scientific and philosophical, we are immediately impressed by the different perspective. What were theoretical problems of the most absolute and inescapable kind cease to exist. While the religious view of the world culminates in an attempted justification of the ways of God to man, the scientific studies the system of things as a given whole to which all questions of justification are irrelevant. The world is as it is, and the category of responsibility is inapplicable. Evil becomes a practical and relative problem. There is no thought of trying to fix responsibility upon some personal agent who could have done otherwise and did not. Man is a part of nature, although a self-directive organism adapted more or less adequately to his environment. And just because he is an organism, he must maintain himself in the face of attacks and fluctuating changes. He is not able to claim exemption from the consequences of cataclysms, such as earthquakes and tornadoes, which result from the unstable balance of physical { 166} energies. He perishes in the same way that beasts and plants do, when his intelligence is not able to find a way of escape from a sudden danger. In other words, physical evil is evil only because it hurts man, who does not want to be hurt. From the objective standpoint, evil and good differ not a jot from one another. They are both causal events baptised by man in accordance with his sympathies and antipathies. Events are good to him or bad to him; in themselves, they are neither good nor bad. Rain does not fall in summer in order to nourish the plants; instead, the plants are nourished and continue to exist because the rain falls. Once, it was hard for man to admit this impersonalism. He wanted to find an objective purpose focusing upon his career. But he is at last beginning to realize that his will to live and create is the source of all values. Nature is a thing to be used for his own desired ends.