To avoid such a result, which to them seemed subversive of their whole system of revealed religion, the Christian theologians and moralists invented the doctrine that although evil was permitted by God to exist for His own wise and good purposes, yet man has been created wholly free to choose between the good and the evil. When therefore man does choose evil, he is the cause and the source of the evil conduct. For moral evil, therefore, man is responsible and accountable, although it may be that his wrong conduct is instigated by supernatural beings of satanic character, and although this evil may exist by God's own permission to the end of working out His own holy purposes in the end.

6

Archbishop King distributed evils into three classes: (1) Those of imperfection; (2) natural; (3) moral. The same division was made by Dr. Samuel Clarke, and this is his argument and explanation, in brief. Liberty implying a natural power of doing evil as well as good; and the imperfect nature of finite beings making it possible for them to abuse this their liberty, to the actual commission of evil; and it being necessary to the order and beauty of the whole, and for displaying the infinite wisdom of the Creator, that there should be different and various degrees of creatures, whereof consequently some must be less perfect than others; hence there necessarily arises a possibility of evil, notwithstanding that the Creator is infinitely good. In short, thus: All that we call evil is either an evil of imperfection, as the want of certain faculties and excellences which other creatures have; or natural evil, as pain, death, and the like; or moral evil, as all kinds of vice. The first of these is not properly an evil.' 'A deficiency in powers and faculties is an evil to any creature no more than their never having been created would have been (sic). The second kind of evil is either a necessary consequence of the former, or it is counterpoised in the whole with as great or greater good; or it is to be regarded as of the nature of punishment, in which case it is a necessary consequence of moral evil. As to this last, it arises wholly from the abuse of liberty, given for other purposes, and designed to contribute to the order and perfection of creation. In this case it is that all sorts of evils have entered the world, yet without prejudice to the infinite goodness of the Creator and Governor thereof.'' This doctrine is further elaborated by Dr. John Clarke. Following out the explanation of moral evil,

1 I take these extracts from Gillett, God in Human Thought, chap. xxxvii. The first extract is quoted by this author from Clarke, the rest is an abstract.

the latter maintains that 'certain irregularities in the moral world follow from the finite nature of things.' Yet an analysis of the faculties and powers of the soul shows that each is individually good, and that whatever evil belongs to it belongs to it as infinite. It is subjected to moral law, and this is required by its nature. If it violates that law it is its own fault, and hence the cause of every moral evil in the world is 'the abuse of that liberty with which God endued every man.' Yet this liberty is itself an excellent gift. It is essential to rational life and its enjoyments. To withdraw it would degrade man to an animal or a machine.'1

The foregoing are the chief of what may be called the theological explanations of evil-those which look to a supernatural source and cause. In distinction from these we will instance what may be termed the scientific explanations of evil. They do not assume to reach the ultimate source and cause of its phenomena, believing that this is beyond the sphere of human knowledge. They exhibit the facts of individual and social life which give rise to the opposition between the good and the bad, and in generalising these facts attempt to find the proximate causes of the ills we experience. In this search, conducted upon such a principle, it is not to be expected that nature will be transcended. A supernatural may be postulated, but it is an unknowable supernatural. The evil that is made the subject of science is the evil which is in nature; and under this term are included the phenomena of mind both in their individual isolation and in their relations to other minds. It is my purpose in the present work to treat the problem of evil upon this method, being persuaded that much more sure and satisfactory results can be attained than by starting out from any of the theological hypotheses. In the course of our examination, however, we shall have occasion to comment upon some of these latter theories.

We will hence not stay to discuss the doctrines which have been briefly mentioned in this chapter, but will proceed without further preface to analyse the theme of our discourse.

1 Gillett, op. cit.

CHAPTER III.

EVIL AND PAIN.

I HOPE I shall not be considered as taking an unwarrantable liberty in assuming that evil is relative exclusively to conscious or sentient beings. For my own part, I am not able to understand how there can be any sentience without consciousness; but if there be those who think this possible, I am willing to stretch my statement so as to cover all cases of sentience. But, in any event, if there were no sentient beings there would be neither good nor evil. Of course it is equally true that there would be no experience whatever; the narrower truth, however, is sufficient for present uses. If, then, evil be invariably something which relates to sentient beings, it is something which concerns the mental part of those beings, for, given sentience, there are at least the rudiments of a mind, and sentience, as just remarked, is essential to the existence of evil.

If we were asked what we mean by a sentient being, we should probably say a being which feels. Feeling is one of the inseparable aspects of consciousness, of which knowledge and volition are commonly counted as the other two. A creature low down in the animal scale may have feeling, but cognition is at a minimum. Its sentience (which we infer) is the sole mental characteristic of which we are able to take account. There are sundry evidences of feeling, much more pronounced than any of intelligence. This feeling is evinced by the sensibility of the animal or its responsiveness to impressions from without. In addition to this there is an automatic mobility which initiates action of the organism upon the environment. In a word, the feeling which is indicated is that sort of feeling we ordinarily term sensation, which arises in connection with the action and reaction of the organic integer and its surrounding world.

We only know what feeling is by a reference to our individual experience. By feeling we mean, then, feeling as it is in human consciousness. Whether or not we believe that the rhizopoda have

feeling; if they do have any, it is feeling as we conscious human beings have feeling in our own experience-not, indeed, as completely, not to the same degree, but in the same kind. So all along the scale of sentience, up or down, from the lowest organisms to the most highly developed intelligence, there is at any rate feeling in the form of sensation.

Now all that evil which we have termed physical, and which Archbishop King and the Clarkes called natural, is something which primarily affects sensation. We should not know it to be evil were it not for the fact that it produces a sensational experience. Moreover, we have in a radical difference in quality of sensational experiences a natural means of determining that which is physically evil and that which is physically not evil. Sensations are either pleasurable, or painful, or indifferent. Pain is the index of physical evil. That which hurts me I esteem to be evil. Of course this is not the whole of even physical evil, for my neighbour or my race may be injured where I am not, and I unhesitatingly include under evil things the causes of their injury. But to the extent just noted, I hardly think there will be serious dispute or dissent raised by anybody over my propositions.

Let us proceed a little farther. Pain is the index of present physical evil. As intelligence grows we distinguish and define the objects which cause pain. More than that, we remember them. We also form associations from resemblances, and draw inferences with regard to the hurtfulness of things about us. A man does not need to be struck by lightning to know that lightning will do him bodily injury. In proportion to the degree of their intelligence sentient beings organise knowledge so that they form classes of things which they esteem likely to be sources of physical evil, and to which they give an evil character. These things are regarded as proximate agents of evil.

In a similar manner certain actions come to be regarded as causes of physical evil. The burnt child learns that putting his hand in the fire will bring harm to him. Pain teaches men the avoidance of destructive and damaging agents. Foresight is rendered possible by memory and imagination, and schemes and courses of conduct thus secure a good or bad character as respects their relations to physical evil.

This generalisation of which I have been speaking is not merely with regard to what is beneficial or harmful to one individual, but rather to all. Objects or actions regarded as causes

of physical ills are so esteemed with respect to their relations to many, to mankind in general, or to all sentient beings, as the facts warrant the application. To be sure, what may be one man's poison may be another man's meat, but the investigation of nature and the operation of natural laws enables us to find out how far and under what conditions a given substance is poisonous, and under what circumstances and to whom it is nutritious. But in all of these cases the test is pain to somebody. A thing is evil so far forth as it produces pain to some sentient being, and its evil tendencies are esteemed to be such just in the ratio that they seem likely to cause pain. Thus far with reference to physical evil, and up to this point also I should hardly look for substantial dissent.

Inorganic forces, we may thus say, are evil, so far forth as their action produces, or tends to produce, pain to human beings; for we need not go beyond the sphere of human life, activity, and passivity. Setting aside for the moment all considerations of intelligence, it may be declared also that the organic forces of vegetal and animal life are evil in so far as they cause, or tend to cause, pain. In the natural or physical world, in material nature, those forces are evil which are distinctively pain-producing; and of those which produce both pleasure and pain, probably the great majority, their evil character attaches as they have a painproducing effect or tendency, and departs when this effect ceases or this tendency is annulled.

I have already remarked that if there were no sentient beings there would be no such thing as either good or evil. I now add to this truism the further remark, which I think must be an equally obvious truth, that if there were only one sentient being in existence there would be only physical good and physical evil. I protest against this habit which obtains of calling any pain a physical pain, as if all pain were not wholly mental. The suffering is in my mind, not in my members; and yet we are forced to recognise the distinction, almost universally made, between the physical and the moral as applied to good and evil, with which this discussion started out in the first chapter. So far as we have gone we have only what is usually, though it appears to me faultily, termed physical evil. When, therefore, I say that if there were only one sentient being there would exist only physical evil, I mean to indicate that the form of evil we call moral arises from the relations of sentient beings to each other. If Adam were