Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/291

266 might say, how ugly! but on seeing the whole at a glance would know its beauty; even so one seeing the world by bits fancies it evil, but would know it to be good if he saw it as a whole. And the seeming but unreal evil of the parts may be necessary in order that the real whole should be good. Such is the position of our optimists. This is the Platonic-Augustinian doctrine of the unreality of evil.

The logical possibility of ail this we do not for the first either dispute or affirm. But we are dealing with a world of difficulties, and we can only point out the antecedent difficulty of this theory. If the world of experience simply lacked here and there interest, or positive signs of rational perfection, then one might well compare it to the statue, that seen only piecemeal, and through a microscope applied to its surface, would wholly lack the beauty that appears when all is viewed at once. Then one might say, with great plausibility, that if perceptible harmony is simply lacking to our partial view, the great whole may still be a grand harmony. But the trouble lies in the seemingly positive character of evil. Not simple lack of harmony, but horrible discord, is here. How the tortures of the wounded on a field of battle can anyhow enter into a whole in which, as seen by an absolute judge, there is actually no trace of evil at all, this is what we cannot understand. It seems very improbable. Only absolute proof will satisfy us. And of course, as has been indicated, by some of our examples above, it is not the quantity of any evil (if an evil be a quantity at all), but the quality of it, that makes us urge it in