Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/491

466 is an essential element of his goodness. The conflicts of morality are and must be eternal.

Our present explanation of evil in the world is, we have seen, the only one that can both give us the absolute religious comfort, and save us from the terrible moral paralysis involved in destroying, for the Infinite, the distinction between good and evil. The moral experience itself contains the miracle of this solution in the simplest and clearest shape. And it relieves us of any need to long for an absolute peace. For in it the distinction of good and evil is the sharpest, the significance of the strife is the most vivid, at the very instant when, in the strife, the evil will, present and real still, is yet conquered by the good will, and so lost in the universal goodness of the total good act. The distinction of good will and evil will becomes thus the greatest possible; and yet only through the reality of this distinction in the unity of the moral life is goodness present and triumphant. Progress in this world as a whole is therefore simply not needed. The good is eternally gained even in and through the evil. How far the actual process of evolution may in our part of the universe extend is a matter for empirical science.

But our own ideal of human life as a “progressive realization of the good,” — what of that? The answer is obvious. The good will that is in us as a temporal fact, not being yet fully realized or triumphant in us as we are in ourselves as mere finite beings, must aim at complete expression of itself in time and in us, and through us in those whom we seem to influence. For only in so seeking to