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 EVIL

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EVIL

which evil can be assigned, and its origin is one with that of nature as a whole. These systems reject the specific idea of creation; and the idea of God is either rigorously excluded, or identified with an impersonal principle, immanent in the universe, or conceived as a mere abstraction from the methods of nature; which, wlietlier viewed from the standpoint of Materialism or from that of Idealism, is the one ultimate reality. The problem of the origin of evil is thus merged in that of the origin of being. Moral evil, in particular, arises from error, and is to be gradually eliminated, or at least minimized, by improved knowledge of the condi- tions of human welfare (Meliorism) Of this kind, on the whole, were the doctrines of the Ionic Hylozoists, whose fundamental notion was the essential unity of matter and life; and on the other hand, also, that of the Eleatics, who found the origin of all things in al> stract being. The .\tomists, Leucippus and Democri- tus. held what may be called a doctrine of material- istic Monism. This doctrine, however, found its first complete expression in the philosophy of Epicurus, which explicitly rejected the notion of any external influence upon nature, whether of " fate", or of Divine power. .According to the Epicurean Lucretius (De Rerum Xatura, II, line ISO) the existence of evil was fatal to the supposition of the creation of the world by God :

Xequaquam nobis divinitus esse creatam Xaturam mundi, qua? tanta est praedita culpa. Giordano Bruno made God the immanent cause of all things, acting by an internal necessity, and producing the relations considered evil by mankind. Hobbes re- garded God as merely a corporeal first cause; and ap- plying his theory of civil government to the universe, defended the existence of evil Ijy simple assertion of the absolute power to which it is due — a theory which is little else than a statement of materialistic Deter- minism in terms of social relations. Spinoza united matter and spirit in the notion of a single substance, to which he attributed both thought and extension; error and imperfection were the necessary conse- quence of the order of the universe. The Hegelian -Monism, w'hich reproduces many of the ideas of Eck- hart, and is adopted in its main features by many dif- ferent systems of recent origin, gives to evil a place in the unfolding of the Idea, in which both the origin and the inner reality of the universe are to be found. Evil is the temporary discord between what is and what ought to be. Huxley was content to believe that the ultimate causes of things are at present unknown, and may be unknowable. Evil is to be known and com- bated in the concrete and in detail; but the .\gnosti- cism professed, and named, by Huxley refuses to en- tertain any question as to transcendental causes, and confines itself to experimental facts. Haeckel ad- vances a dogmatic materialism, in which substance (i. e. matter and force) appears as the eternal and in- finite basis of all things. Professor Mctchnikoff, on similar principles, places the cause of evil in the " dis- liarmonies" which prevail in nature, and which he thinks may perhaps be ultimately removed, for the human race at least, together with the pessimistic temper arising from them, by the progress of science. Bovmk^au has asserted in express terms the futility of seeking a transcendental or supernatural origin for evil, and the necessity of confining the view to natural, accessible, and determinable causes (Revue Philoso- phique, I, 1900).

The recently constructed system, or method, called Pragmatism, has this much in common with Pessi- mism, that it regards evil as an actually unavoidable part of that human experience which is in point of fact identical with truth and reality. The world is what we make it; evil tends to diminish with the growth of experience, and may finally vanish; though, on the other hand, there may always remain an irriv ducilile minimum of evil. The origin of evil is, like

the origin of all things, inexplicable; it cannot be fitted into any theory of the design of the universe, simply because no such theory is possible. " We cannot by any possibility comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of goods and evils that we find in this actual world's particulars — the mere word design, by itself, has no consequences and explains nothing. " (James, Pragmatism, London, 1907. Cf, Schiller, Humanism, London, 1907.) Nietzsche holds evil to be purely relative, and in its moral aspect at least, a transitory and non-fundamental concept. With him, mankind in its present state, is "the animal not yet properly adapted to his environment". In this mode of thought the individual necessarily counts for compara- tively little, as being merely a transient manifestation of the cosmic force; and the social aspects of humanity are those under which its pains and shortcomings are mostly considered, with a view to their amelioration. Hence, the various forms of Socialism; the itlea con- ceived by Xietzsche of a totally new, though as yet un- defined, form of social morality, and of the constitu- tion and mutual relations of classes; and the so-called ethical and scientific religions inculcating morality as tending to the general good. The first example of such religions was that of Auguste Comte, who upon the materialistic basis of Positivism, founded the " religion of humanity", and professed to substitute an enthu- siasm for humanity as the motive of right action, for the motives of supernatural religion.

In the light of Catholic doctrine, any theory that may be held concerning evil must include certain points bearing on the question that have been authori- tatively defined. These points are (1) the omnipo- tence, omniscience, and absolute goodness of the Cre- ator; (2) the freedom of the will ; and (3) that suffer- ing is the penal consequence of wilful disobedience to the law of God. A complete account may be gathered from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, by whom the principles of .St. .\ugustine are systematized, and to some extent supplemented. Evil, according to St. Thomas, is a privation, or the absence of some good which belongs properly to the nature of the creature. (I, Q. xiv, a. 10; Q. xlix, a. 3; Contra Gentiles, III, ix, x). There is therefore no "summum malum", or positive source of evil, correspwnding to the "sum- mum bonum ", which is God (I, Q. xlix, a. 3; C. G., Ill, 15; DeMalo, I, 1); evil being not " ens reale " but only "ens rationis" — i. e. it exists not as an objective fact, but as a subjective conception ; things are evil not in themselves, but by reason of their relation to other things, or persons. All realities (entid) are in them- selves good; they produce bad results only incident- ally; and consequently the ultimate cause of evil is fundamentally good, as well as the objects in which evil is found"(I. Q. xlix; cf. I, Q. v, 3; De Malo, I, 3). Thus the Manicha?an dualism has no foundation in reason.

Evil is threefold, viz., malum naturw (metaphysical evil), culfxe (moral), and poena: (physical, the retribu- tive consequence of malttm culpae) (I, Q. xlviii, a. 5, G; Q. Ixiii, a. 9; De Malo, I, 4). Its existence subserves the perfection of the whole; the universe would be less perfect if it contained no evil. Thus fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live; and if there were no wrongdoing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice (I, Q. xlviii, a. 2). God is said (as in Is., xlv) to be the author of evil in the sense that the corruption of material objects in nature is ordained by Him, as a means for carrying out the design of the universe; and on the other hand, the evil which exists as the consequence of the breach of Divine laws is in the same sense due to Divine appointment: the vmi- verse would be less perfect if its laws could be broken with impunity. Thus evil, in one aspect, i. e. as counter-balancing the deordination of sin, has the na-