Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/111

74 scourge of evil, humanity would never have emerged out of animality, or, having emerged, would never have advanced beyond the lowest stages. It is also evident that perfect knowledge of the laws of Nature would remove every physical evil. Looking back over the course, then, from the elevated plane of perfect knowledge, and perceiving that the attainment of that plane was conditioned on the existence of evil — on punishment for ignorance — shall we any longer call it evil? Is it not really good in disguise?

But it may be answered: “Yes, this is all true if we accept evolution by struggle as a necessary process; but why may not the same result have been attained in some less expensive, less distressing way?” I answer: Because, as already seen, no other process is conceivable that would result in a moral being, and achievement of such a being is the purpose of all evolution. One law, one process, one meaning and purpose, runs through all evolution, and that purpose is only revealed at the end. As in biology the laws of form and structure are best studied in the lowest organisms, where these are simplest, but those of function are studied best in the highest organisms, because only there clearly expressed, just so the laws of process in evolution are best understood in its lower and simpler stages, but the end, the purpose and meaning of the whole process from the beginning, is not fully declared until the end. That end is the achievement of a moral being; and a moral being without struggle with evil is impossible because a contradiction in terms, and the same law must run throughout.