Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/728

 EVIL

650

EVIL

There is practically a general agreement of authori- ties as to the nature of evil, some allowance being made for varying modes of expression depending on a corresponding variety of philosophical presupposi- tions. But on the question of the origin of evil there has been, and is, a considerable diversity of opinion. The problem is strictly a metaphysical one; i. e. it cannot be solved by a mere experimental analysis of the actual conditions from which evil results. The question, which Schopenhauer has called "the punc- tum pruriens of metaphysics", is concerned not so much with the various detailed manifestations of evil in nature, as with the hidden and underlying cause which has made these manifestations possible or neces- sary; and it is at once evident that enquiry in a region so obscure must be attended with great difficulty, and that the conclusions reached must, for the most part, be of a provisional and tentative character. No sys- tem of philosophy has ever succeeded in escaping from the obscurity in which the subject is involved; but it is not too much to say that the Christian solution offers, on the whole, fewer difficulties, and approaches more nearly to completeness than any other. The question may be stated thus. Admitting that evil consists in a certain relation of man to his environ- ment, or that it arises in the relation of the component parts of the totality of existence to one another, how comes it that though all are alike the results of a uni- versal cosmic process, this universal agency is perpetu- ally at war with itself, contradicting and thwarting its own efforts in the mutual hostility of its progeny? Further, admitting that metaphysical evil in itself may be merely nature's method, involving nothing more than a continual redistribution of the material elements of the universe, human suffering and wrong- doing still stand out as essentially opposed to the general scheme of natural development, and are scarcely to be reconciled in thought with any concep- tion of unity or harmony in nature. To what, then, is the evil of human life, physical and moral, to be at- tributed as its cause? But when the universe is con- sidered as the work of an all-benevolent and all-power- ful Creator, a fresh element is adiied to the problem. If God is all-benevolent, why did He cause or permit suffering? If He is all-powerful. He can be vmder no necessitj' of creating or permitting it ; and on the other hand, if He is under any such necessity. He cannot be all-powerful. Again, if God is absolutely good, and also omnipotent, how can He permit the existence of moral evil? We have to enquire, that is to say, how- evil has come to exist, and what is its special relation to the Creator of the universe.

The solution of the problem has been attempted by three diflerent methods.

I. It has been contended that existence is funda- mentally evil ; that evil is the active principle of the universe, and good no more than an illusion, the pur- suit of which serves to induce the human race to per- petuate its own existence (see Pessi.mism). This is the fundamental tenet of Buddhism (q. v.), which re- gards happiness as unattainable, and holds that there is no way of escaping from misery but by ceasing to exist otherwise than in the impersonal state of Nir- vana. The origin of suffering, according to Buddha, is " the thirst for being". This was also, among Greek philosophers, the view of Hegesias the Cyrenaic (called TreiffiSdi'OTos, the counsellor of death), who held life to be valueless, and jileasure, the only good, to be un- attainable. But the Greek temper was naturally dis- inclined to a pessimistic view of nature and life; and while popular mythology embodied the <larker aspects of existence in such conceptions as tho.se of Fate, the avenging Furies, and the envy ((pSivos) of the gods, Greek thinkers, as a rule, held that evil is not univer- sally supreme, but can be avoided or overcome by the wise and virtuous.

Pessimism, as a metaphysical system, is the product

of modern times. Its chief representatives are Schop- enhauer and von Hartmann, both of whom hold the actual universe to be fundamentally evil, and happi- ness in it to be impossible. The origin of the phe- nomenal universe is attributed by Schopenhauer to a transcendental Will, which he identifies with pure being; and by Hartmann to the Unconscious, which includes both the Will and the Idea (Vorstellung) of Schopenhauer. According to both Schopenhauer and Hartmann, suffering has come into existence with self-consciousness, from which it is inseparable.

II. Evil has been attributed to one of two mutually opposed principles, to which respectively the mingled good and evil of the world are due. The relation be- tween the two is variously represented, and ranges from the co-ordination imagined by Zoroastrianism to the mere relative independence of the created will as held by Christian theology. Zoroaster attributed good and evU respectively to two mutually hostile principles (/5(fai, or 4px<") called Ormuzd (.\hura Mazda) and .\hriman (Angra Mainyu). Each was in- dependent of the other; but eventually the good were to be victorious with Ormuzd, and Ahriman and his evil followers were to be expelled from the world. This mj-thological dualism passed to the sect of the Manichees, whose founder, Manes, added a third, but subordinate principle, emanating from the source of good (and perhaps corresponding, in some degree, to the Mithras of Zoroastrianism), in the "living spirit", by whom was formed the present material world of mingled good and evil. Manes held that matter was essentially evil, and therefore could not be in direct contact with God. He probably derived the notion from the Gnostic sects, which, though they differed on many points from one another, were generally agreed in following the opinions of Philo, and the neo- Platonist Plotinus, as to the evil of matter. They held the world to have been formed by an emanation, the Demiurge, as a kind of intermediary between God and impure matter. Bardesanes, however, and his followers regarded evil as resulting from the misuse of created free will.

The notion that evil is necessarily inherent in mat- ter, independent of the Divine author of good, and in some sense opposed to Him, is common to the above theosophical systems, to many of the purely rational conceptions of Greek philosophy, and to much that has been advanced on this subject in later times. In the Pjihagorean idea of a numerical harmony as the constitutive principle of the world, good is repre- sented by unity and evil by multiplicity (Philolaus, Fragm.). Heraclitus set the "strife", which he held to be the essential condition of life, over against the action of the immanent deity. " God is the author of all that is right and good and just; but men have sometimes chosen good and sometimes evil" (Fragm. 61). Empedocles, again, attributed evil to the princi- ple of hate (wrKos), inherent together with its oppo- site, love (i/ifXia), in the miiverse. Plato held God to be "free from blame" (dva/rios) for the evil of the world ; its cause was partly the necessary imperfection of material and created existence, and partly the ac- tion of the human will (Timacus, xlii; cf. Phiedo, Ix). With Aristotle, evil is a necessary aspect of the con- stant changes of matter, and has in it.self no real exist- ence (Metaph., ix, 9). The Stoics conceived evil in a somewhat similar manner, as due to necessity; the immanent Divine power harmonizes the evil and good in a changing world. Moral evil proceeds from the folly of mankind, not from the Divine will, and is over- ruled by it to a good end. In the hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus (Stob. Eel., I, p. 150) may be perceived an ap- pro.ach to the doctrine of Leibniz, as to the nature of evil and the goodness of the world. " Nothing is done without thee in earth or sea or sky, save what evil men commit by their own folly; so thou hast fitted to- gether all evil and good in one, that there might be one