Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/484

Rh wills of the sinners as the wills of the good men are related to their evil impulses.

The explanation that evil is needed to contrast with goodness has already been mentioned.

Evil therefore, as a supposed real fact, separate from goodness, and a totally independent entity, is and must be an illusion. The objections to this view that we previously urged in Chapter VIII. were all applicable to the world of powers, which we viewed and had to view externally. God’s life, viewed internally, as philosophy must view it, is not subject to these criticisms. And the moral experience has taught us how we are to explain the existence of the only partial evil that we clearly know to be even a partial evil, namely, the evil will. The explanation is that the good act has its existence and life in the transcending of experienced present evil. This evil must not be an external evil, beyond the good will, but must be experienced in the same indivisible moment in which it is transcended. That this wondrous union is possible, we simply find as fact in the moral experience. No genuine moral goodness is possible save in the midst of such inner warfare. The absence of the evil impulse leaves naught but innocence or instinct, morally insipid and colorless. Goodness is this organism of struggling elements. Now, as we declare, in the infinite and united thought of God this unity of goodness is eternally present. God’s life is this infinite rest, not apart from but in the endless strife, as in substance Heraclitus so well and originally taught.