5. If then, even here below, souls enjoy the faculty of arriving at
happiness, we should not accuse the constitution of the universe
because some souls are not happy; the fault rather lies with their
weakness, which hinders them from struggling courageously enough in
the career where prizes are offered to virtue. Why indeed should we
be astonished that the spirits which have not made themselves divine
should not enjoy divine life? Poverty and diseases are of no importance
to the good, and they are useful to the evil (as thought Theognis).[40]
Besides, we are necessarily subject to diseases, because we have a
body. Then all these accidents are not useless for the order and
existence of the universe. Indeed, when a being is dissolved into its
elements, the Reason of the universe uses it to beget other beings,
for the universal Reason embraces everything within its sphere of
activity. Thus when the body is disorganized, and the soul is softened
by her passions, then the body, overcome by sickness, and the soul,
overcome by vice, are introduced into another series and order. There
are things, like poverty and sickness, which benefit the persons who
undergo them. Even vice contributes to the perfection of the universe,
because it furnishes opportunity for the exercise of the divine
justice. It serves other purposes also; for instance, it increases the
vigilance of souls, and excites the mind and intelligence to avoid the
paths of perdition; it also emphasizes the value of virtue by contrast
with the evils that overtake the wicked. Of course, such utilities
are not the cause of the existence of evils; we only mean that, since
evils exist, the divinity made use of them to accomplish His purposes.
It would be the characteristic of a great power to make even evils
promote the fulfilment of its purposes, to cause formless things to
assist in the production of forms. In short, we assert that evil is
only an omission or failure of good. Now a coming short of good must
necessarily exist in the beings here below, because in them good is
mingled with other things; for this thing to which the good is allied
differs from the good, and thus produces the lack of good. That is why
"it is impossible for evil to be destroyed":[41] because things are
successively inferior, relatively to the nature of the absolute Good;
and because, being different from the Good from which they derive their
existence, they have become what they are by growing more distant from
their principle.