3: The Problem of Evil - Page 2

exaggerate its importance by
imagining it as a standstill. Could we collect the statistics of
the immense amount of death and putrefaction happening every
moment in this earth, they would appal us. But evil is ever
moving; with all its incalculable immensity it does not
effectually clog the current of our life; and we find that the
earth, water, and air remain sweet and pure for living beings.
All statistics consist of our attempts to represent statistically
what is in motion; and in the process things assume a weight in
our mind which they have not in reality. For this reason a man,
who by his profession is concerned with any particular aspect of
life, is apt to magnify its proportions; in laying undue stress
upon facts he loses his hold upon truth. A detective may have
the opportunity of studying crimes in detail, but he loses his
sense of their relative places in the whole social economy. When
science collects facts to illustrate the struggle for existence
that is going on in the kingdom of life, it raises a picture in
our minds of "nature red in tooth and claw." But in these mental
pictures we give a fixity to colours and forms which are really
evanescent. It is like calculating the weight of the air on each
square inch of our body to prove that it must be crushingly heavy
for us. With every weight, however, there is an adjustment, and
we lightly bear our burden. With the struggle for existence in
nature there is reciprocity. There is the love for children and
for comrades; there is the sacrifice of self, which springs from
love; and this love is the positive element in life.

If we kept the search-light of our observation turned upon the
fact of death, the world would appear to us like a huge charnel-
house; but in the world of life the thought of death has, we
find, the least possible hold upon our minds. Not because it is
the least apparent, but because it is the negative aspect of
life; just as, in spite of the fact that we shut our eyelids
every second, it is the openings of the eye that count. Life as
a whole never takes death seriously. It laughs, dances and
plays, it builds, hoards and loves in death's face. Only when we
detach one individual fact of death do we see its blankness and
become dismayed. We lose sight of the wholeness of a life of
which death is part. It is like looking at a piece of cloth
through a microscope. It appears like a net; we gaze at the big
holes and shiver in imagination. But the truth is, death is not
the ultimate reality. It looks black, as the sky looks blue; but
it does not blacken existence, just as the sky does not leave its
stain upon the wings of the bird.

When we watch a child trying to walk, we see its countless
failures; its