Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/216

 about it, quite freely, by the mere beck of his will. The plan of the world creation had been predetermined since eternity in his ideas; the free will determined to materialize this plan; the beck of his will actually materialized it.”

Particularly fine is here the word “ideas.”

59. The incitement toward the creation, and its purpose. God created the world for this reason:

“We must believe that God, being good and all-good, though all-perfect and all-glorious in himself, created the world out of nothing for the purpose that other beings, glorifying him, might partake of his grace.” (p. 370.)

The purpose of God is glory. Proofs from Holy Scripture and then:

60. The perfection of the creation and whence evil comes into the world. The question is, Whence comes the evil? and the answer is that there is no evil. And the proof for this is as follows:

“God is a supremely all-wise and omnipotent being, consequently he could not have created the world imperfect, could not have created a single thing in it which would be insufficient for its purpose and would not serve for the perfection of the whole. God is a most holy and all-good being, consequently he could not be the cause of evil, either physical or moral, and if he had created an imperfect world, it would have been so, because he was unable to create a more perfect one, or because he did not want to. But both assumptions are equally incongruous with the true concept of the highest being.” End of the article. (p. 376.)

There is no evil, because God is good. But how about our suffering from the evil? What sense was there in asking? How can there be any evil, when there is none?

61. The moral application of the dogma is that it is necessary to glorify God, and so forth.