3: The Problem of Evil

The question why there is evil in existence is the same as why
there is imperfection, or, in other words, why there is creation
at all. We must take it for granted that it could not be
otherwise; that creation must be imperfect, must be gradual, and
that it is futile to ask the question, Why we are?

But this is the real question we ought to ask: Is this
imperfection the final truth, is evil absolute and ultimate? The
river has its boundaries, its banks, but is a river all banks? or
are the banks the final facts about the river? Do not these
obstructions themselves give its water an onward motion? The
towing rope binds a boat, but is the bondage its meaning? Does
it not at the same time draw the boat forward?

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could
have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries
which restrain it, but in its movement, which is towards
perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and
sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order,
beauty and joy, goodness and love. The idea of God that man has
in his being is the wonder of all wonders. He has felt in the
depths of his life that what appears as imperfect is the
manifestation of the perfect; just as a man who has an ear for
music realises the perfection of a song, while in fact he is only
listening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the great
paradox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits;
it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude every
moment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness;
finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are but
completeness manifested in parts, infinity revealed within
bounds.

Pain, which is the feeling of our finiteness, is not a fixture in
our life. It is not an end in itself, as joy is. To meet with
it is to know that it has no part in the true permanence of
creation. It is what error is in our intellectual life. To go
through the history of the development of science is to go
through the maze of mistakes it made current at different times.
Yet no one really believes that science is the one perfect mode
of disseminating mistakes. The progressive ascertainment of
truth is the important thing to remember in the history of
science, not its innumerable mistakes. Error, by its nature,
cannot be stationary; it cannot remain with truth; like a tramp,
it must quit its lodging as soon as it fails to pay its score to
the full.

As in intellectual error, so in evil of any other form, its
essence is impermanence, for it cannot accord with the whole.
Every moment it is being corrected by the totality of things and
keeps changing its aspect. We