The insufficiency of his opti

mism.

will of God. But he rejects the assumption that a universe in which there is the evil we find may not be the best; since, for all man can tell, the best may be not that in which there is no such evil; for it may turn out that the evil is the natural and needed parent of the good. An imperfection in the part may be needed for the perfection of the Whole. A general will prefer a great victory with a wound to loss of the battle without the wound. Sin may introduce into the universe something nobler than what could have been brought into existence but for sin. In that case, Leibniz argues, a world with sin in it would be better than a world without sin. But Leibniz fails to show how the supposed perfect eternal ideals make the evils which are found in the world inevitable, or how a world in which nothing could come into existence that ought not to exist might not be the perfect world.

This form of theistic optimism seems to make moral evil not something which there is an unconditional obligation to condemn, but rather what may, for its own sake, be admitted as good by the Supreme Power, on account of its consequences. It also seems to imply an inadequate conception of the power of persons, in virtue of their individual moral responsibility for their own acts, to bring into existence what ought not to exist, and what is therefore not brought into existence by a divine necessity. If moral personality is originative—to the extent of the spiritual acts and states for which a person is morally accountable, then-as I have

been arguing-the question resolves into the consistency of the existence of persons, able themselves to make themselves bad, with infinite perfection in the Supreme Power. May beings exist, under the perfect intellectual system of the universe, who are able to resist the divine will-that all persons should be morally good, and so realise the ideal of rightness or duty.

make moral

That the glories of Rome should make the crimes of It seems to Sextus only relatively crimes, but absolutely and finally evil absolgood, by a necessity which omnipotence is unable to utely good. overcome, is surely an unsatisfying idea. It seems to relieve the difficulty by explaining away moral evil, or rather by transforming it, at a higher point of view, into good; so that the worst crimes are only relatively evil, but really what ought to come into existence. It seems to imply that Sextus could not help being bad, because what we regard as a bad Sextus was really a good Sextus, when he is looked at in all his relations, or as a part of the universe. He is what he is by an intellectual necessity of existence, not by a personal act of his own that is absolutely independent of ideal necessities, and that might, but for himself alone, have been other than what it actually was. This is to make Sextus unfortunate, not blameworthy. For moral evil is the entrance into existence of what ought not to exist, and for which there was no absolute necessity, only a free individual volition. His sin is the singular effect of the person in whose voluntary act it is created. Is the existence of individual persons on moral trial,

The intel

who therefore can make themselves bad, necessarily inconsistent with omnipotence, or necessarily inconsistent with perfect goodness? Can the universe not be finally divine, even if it contains individual beings who are able to make and keep themselves undivine, notwithstanding God's will and endeavour that they should be good?

But, after all, this moral trial of individual persons lectual pos- without their own leave, their weakness and ignorance,

sibility

that the optimist conception, which is the alternative to

in a finally untrust

worthy universe, may be, notwith

of mystery,

reason for

moral and religious faith.

and the associated miseries of men and other sentient beings, presented on this earth, forms a strange and unexpected feature of the revelation of morally trustthat of life worthy Power presented in the universe. The persistency and extent of the lurid phenomena within human experience are still insufficiently explained, by the reference of acts of will that ought not to be acted standing its remainder solely to the originative agency of individual persons. sufficient Under this condition, one might have expected to find some persons resisting, others perfectly conforming themselves to, the moral ideal of reason and assimilating the divine life. The contrary fact, and the morally downward tendency found in men, suggests that there is a remainder of mystery in personality which we are not able to remove; perhaps that the persons on this planet began to exist personally before their birth into this life; or perhaps that no individual person is wholly individual. But incomplete knowledge, as distinguished from absolute self-contradiction, always leaves room for the optimist conception that is presupposed in a finally trustworthy and hope

ful, or divine, world. Pessimist universal scepticismwhich is literally suicidal-for final extinction of conscious life would be the escape out of an experience that may in the end deceive us all, even issuing in an outcome of universal woe-this pessimist scepticism can be imposed, not by incomplete knowledge, with its remainder of mystery, but only by a complete perception that the existing universe must be absolutely contradictory to a final idea of perfect goodness. When the necessary alternatives are theistic optimism and atheistic pessimism, I fail to find in reason this necessity for the suicidal alternative; and I do find the opposite alternative supported by what is highest in the constitution of man, or by man at his best. This is not demonstration, as in pure mathematics. But is it not enough to satisfy him who sincerely seeks to become what he ought to be?

LECTURE VIII.

PROGRESS.

ally scep

mism the

logical alternative

optimism.

A univers THE reductio ad absurdum implied in a finally untrusttical pessi worthy universe, which makes inevitable the pessimist and universally sceptical conception, is the philosoto theistic phical vindication of the theistic or optimist interpretation of the world. The optimist alternative is demonstrable, so far as universal nescience and despair admits of refutation by the impossibility of interpreting experience, or even sustaining life, without final moral faith, consciously or unconsciously in operation. This refutation should be sufficient, unless it can be demonstrated that the mixture of evil-intellectual, physical, and moral-with what is good, or conformable to moral reason, is absolutely contradictory to the idea of morally perfect Power being at the root of all. But this demonstration would be literally suicidal. If the evil found in the universe is not somehow consistent with the perfect goodness of its supreme Power, and so with a deep or ultimate optimism, the universe of so-called