Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/101

 might have been. A hog is not an evil beast, but when a man is degraded to the level of a hog, with the accompanying atrophy of finer elements, he is no more evil than a hog. The evil of the final degradation lies in the comparison of what is with what might have been. During the process of degradation the comparison is an evil for the man himself, and at its final stage it remains an evil for others.

But in this last point respecting the evil for others, it becomes plain that, with a suffciently comprehensive view, a stable state of final degradation is not reached. For the relationships with society and the indirect effects have to be taken into account. Also destruction when accomplished is not an evil for the thing destroyed. For there is no such thing. Again the evil lies in the loss to the social environment. There is evil when things are at cross purposes.

The contrast in the world between evil and good is the contrast between the turbulence of evil and the “peace which passeth all