Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/729

 EVIL

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EVIL

reasonable and everlasting scheme of all things." In the mystical system of Eckhart (d. 1329), evil, sin in- cluded, has its place in the evolutionary scheme by which all proceeds from and returns to God, and con- tributes, both in the moral order and in the physical, to the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. Eck- hart 's monistic or pantheistic tendencies .seem to have obscured for him many of the difficulties of the sub- ject, as has been the case with those by whom the same tendencies have since been carried to an extreme conclusion.

Christian philosophy has, like the Hebrew, uni- formly attributed moral and physical evil to the action of created free will. Man has "himself brought about the evU from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God, on obedience to which hLs happiness depended. Evil is in created things under the aspect of mutabil- ity, and possibility of defect, not as existing per se: and the errors of mankind, mistaking the true conditions of its own well-being, have been the cause of moral and physical evil (Dion. Areop., De Div. Nom., iv, 31; St. Aug., De Civ. Dei, xii). The evil from which man suffers is, however, the condition of good, for the sake of which it is permitted. Thus, " God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to ex- ist " (St. Aug., Enchirid., xxvii). Evil contributes to the perfection of the universe, as shadows to the perfection of a picture, or harmonj' to that of mu.sic (DeCiv. Dei, xi). Again, the excellenceof God's works in nature is insisted on as evidence of the Divine wis- dom, power, and goodness, by which no evil can be directly cau.sed. (Greg. Nyss., De. opif. hom.) Thus Boethius asks (De Consol. Phil., I, iv) Who can be the author of good, if God is the author of evil? As darkness is nothing but the absence of light, and is not produced by creation, so evil is merely the defect of goodness. (St. Aug., In Gen. ad lit.) St. Basil (HexEem., Hom. ii) points out the educative purposes served by evil; and St. Augustine, holding evil to be permitted for the punishment of the wicked and the trial of the good, shows that it has, under this aspect, the nature of good, and is pleasing to God, not because of what it is, but because of where it is; i. e. as the penal and just consequence of sin (De Civ. Dei, XI, xii, De Vera Relig. xliv). Lactantius uses similar argu- ments to oppose the dilemma, as to the omnipotence and goodness of God, which he puts into the mouth of Epicurus (De Ira Dei, xiii). St. Anselm (Monolo- gium) connects evil with the partial manifestation of good by creation; its fullness being in God alone.

The features which stand out in the earlier Christian explanation of evil, as compared with non-Christian dualistic theories are thus ( 1) the definite attribution to God of absolute omnipotence and goodness, not- withstanding His permission of the existence of evil ; (2) the assignment of a moral and retributive cause for suffering in the sin of mankind ; and (3) the un- hesitating assertion of the beneficence of God's pur- pose in permitting evil, together with the full admis- sion that lie could, had He so chosen, have prevented it (De Civ. Dei, xiv). How God's permi-ssion of the evil which He foreknew and could have prevented is to be reconciled with His goodness, is not fully considered ; St. Augustine states the question in forcible terms, but is content by way of answer to follow St. Paul, in his reference to the unsearchableness of the Divine judgments (Contra Julianum, I, 48).

The same general lines have been followed by most of the modern attempts to account in terms of Theism for tlie existence of evil. Descartes and Malebranche held that the world is the best possible for the purpo.se for which it was created, i. e. for the manifestation of the attrilnites of God. If it had been more perfect in detail, it would have been less fitted as a whole for the attainment of this object. The relation of evil to the will of a perfectly benevolent Creator was elaborately treated by Leibniz, in answer to Bayle, who had in-

sisted on the arguments derived from the existence of evil against that of a good and omnipotent God. Leib- nitz founded his views mainly on those of St. Augus- tine and St. Thomas, and deduced from them his theory of Optimism (q. v.). According to it, the uni- verse is the best possible; but metaphysical evil, or imperfection, is necessarily involved in its constitu- tion, since it must be finite, and could not have been endowed with the infinite perfection which belongs to God alone. Moral and physical evil are due to the fall of man, but all evil is overruled by God to a good pur- pose. Moreover, the world with which we are ac- quainted is only a very small factor in the whole of creation, and it may be supposed that the evil it con- tains is necessary for the existence of other regions un- kno«Ti to us. Voltaire, in "Candide", undertook to throw ridicule upon the idea of the "best possible world"; and it must be admitted that the theory is open to grave objections. On the one hand, it is scarcely consistent with belief in the Divine omnipo- tence; and on the other, it fails to account for the per- mission (or indirect authorship) of evil by a good God, to which Bayle had specially taken exception. We cannot know that this world is the best passible; and if it were, why, since it must include so much that is evil, should a perfectly good God have created it? It may "le urged, moreover, that there can be no degree of finite goodness which is not susceptible of increase by omnipotence, without ceasing to fall short of infinite perfection.

Leibniz has been more or less closely followed by many who have since treated the subject from the Christian point of view. These have, for the most part, emphasized the evidence in creation of the wisdom and goodness of its Author, after the manner of the Book of Job, and have been content to leave undiscov- ered the reason for the creation, by Him, of a universe in which evil is unavoidable. Such was the view of King (Essay on the Origin of Evil, London, 1732), who insisted strongly on the doctrine of the best possible world; of Cud worth, who held that evil, though in- separable from the nature of imperfect beings, is largely a matter of men's own fancy and opinions, rather than of the reality of things, and therefore not to be made the ground of accusation against Divine Pro\'idence. Derham (Physico-Theology, London, 1712) took occasion from an examination of the excel- lence of creation to commend an attitude of humility and trust towards the Creator of "this elegant, this well-contrived, well-formed world, in which we find everytliing necessary for the sustentation, use and pleasure both of man and every other creature here below; as well as some whips, some rods, to scourge us for our sins". Priestley held a doctrine of absolute De- terminism, and consequently attributed evil solely to the Divine will; which, however, he justified by the good ends which evil is providentially maile to sub- serve (Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, Birming- ham, 1782). Clarke, again, called special attention to the evidence of method and design, which bear witness to the benevolence of the Creator, in the midst of apparent moral and physical disorder. Rosmini, closely following Malebranche, pointed out that the question of the possibility of a better world than this has really no meaning; any world created by God must be the best possible in relation to its special purpose, apart from which neither goodness nor badness can be predicated of it. Mamiani also supposed evil to be in- separable from the finite, but that it tended to disap- pear as the finite approached its final union with the mfinite.

III. The third way of conceiving the place of evil in the general scheme of existence is that of those systems of Monism, by which evil is viewed as merely a mode in which certain aspects or moments of the develop- ment of nature are apprehended by human conscious- ness. In this view there is no distinctive principle to