_A Word of Caution_
Before we enter upon this topic a word of caution may be needed. I do
not wish the purpose of the foregoing questions to be misunderstood. The
serial nature of human thinking and speaking makes it impossible to
express one's thought on any great subject in a solid block; one must
needs give it forth in consecutive fragments, so that parts of it run
the risk of being lost upon the reader or hearer, while other parts are
made to assume undue proportions. Moreover, there are many minds that
habitually catch at the fragments of a thought, and never seize it in
the block; and in such manner do strange misconceptions arise. I never
could have dreamed, until taught by droll experience, that the foregoing
allusions to the garden of Eden could be understood as a glorification
of sin, and an invitation to my fellow-men to come forth with me and be
wicked! But even so it was, on one occasion when I was trying, somewhat
more scantily than here, to state the present case. In the midst of my
endeavour to justify the grand spirit of faith which our fathers showed
when from abysmal depths of affliction they never failed to cry that God
doeth all things well, I was suddenly interrupted with queries as to
just what percentage of sin and crime I regarded as needful for the
moral equilibrium of the universe; how much did I propose to commit
myself, how much would I advise people in general to commit, and just
where would I have them stop! Others deemed it necessary to remind me
that there is already too much suffering in the world, and we ought not
to seek to increase it; that the difference between right and wrong is
of great practical importance; and that if we try to treat evil as good
we shall make good no better than evil.
When one has sufficiently recovered one's gravity, it is permissible to
reply to such criticisms that the sharp antithesis between good and evil
is essential to every step of my argument, which would entirely collapse
if the antagonism were for one moment disregarded. The quantity of
suffering in the world is unquestionably so great as to prompt us to do
all in our power to diminish it; such we shall presently see must be the
case in a world that proceeds through stages of evolution. When one
reverently assumes that it was through some all-wise and holy purpose
that sin was permitted to come into the world, it ought to be quite
superfluous to add that the fulfilment of any such purpose demands that
sin be not cherished, but suppressed. If one seeks, as a philosopher, to
explain and justify God's wholesale use of death in the general economy
of the universe, is one forsooth to be charged with praising murder as a
fine art and with seeking to found a society of Thugs?
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