IV.] SCIENCE EXCLUDES GOOD AND EVIL 79

As a matter of fact, in the scientific view of Nature there is no such thing as moral good and evil. There is the fitness or unfitness of organic beings to perform certain functions whereby their own physical welfare and the perpetuation of their kind is secured.

In the case of man, there gradually results from the due performance of these functions a highly complex social organisation which, advantageous to intellectual progress and culture and to the development of the artistic and æsthetic faculties, is encumbered with its own difficulties and drawbacks, and entails its own peculiar sufferings, so that if limited to the earthly horizon, (as the view of Science perforce must be,) it is difficult to say whether even the greatest of civilisations is really worth all the effort and sacrifice by which it has been attained.

As we have seen, however, there are but few minds able to rest in that external interpretation of experience which is all that Science can afford. It seems an inevitable consequence of the mental constitution of man that he should believe the universe has a meaning which he can to some extent penetrate, and owing to this conviction moral

80

PROBLEM OF GOOD

[CHAP.

evil appears as a "problem" which must certainly have a solution even though its discovery should for ever baffle the best efforts of the human intellect.

We can

There is, of course, the pessimistic manner of cutting the Gordian Knot. accept evil as the eternal ruling principle of the universe when every manifestation of it would be a necessary consequence of its place at the heart of things. There would then, however, arise the problem of good. We should have to face the question why there should be any "milk of human kindness," any unselfish love, any disinterested devotion to high intellectual or social aims, and, most of all, why we should attach any blame to ourselves if we fall short of an ideal standard of "right" either external or internal.

In truth this difficulty must be widely recognised, for there are very few out-andout pessimists, people whose conscious and assured conviction it is that there exists a "stream of tendency not ourselves making for" evil, and no counterbalancing tendency

66

making for righteousness." The thinkers among us are mostly more daunted by the apparent capriciousness of the adjustment

Iv.] THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF DUTY

81

between the two tendencies, than by the presence or absence of either one. The perplexing conclusion of human experience is that when man would do good, evil is present with him: and when he would do evil, good is present with him, for the bad man as often stays from completing a course of conduct which would be "no more than we should expect," as the good man yields to a temptation we should have supposed abhorrent to him.

So far then it would seem that good and evil are both root-principles of the universe, that, as was suggested above, both are expressions of the Divine Individuality. Such a conclusion, apart from its repugnance, leaves unaccounted for the existence of the feeling of duty-the "ought." Why does a man feel that he "ought" to pursue whatever course of conduct judged by his recognised standard (be the latter low or high) of right and wrong, is right, and never what is "wrong." He may wish and intend the latter, or not wishing and intending, may nevertheless follow it because "the temptation was so strong" that he "could not help" yielding; but never-if he is true to himself-will he

F

82

MORAL OBLIGATION

[CHAP.

aver that he did wrong because he felt he ought. "I must yield though I ought not," is the language of his inner experience when about to succumb. We may, for our present purpose neglect the explanations of Science as to the processes through which this sense of "ought" has arisen. They are highly instructive and important in their own place. But the mind of man cannot rest in processes. It recognises that results are at least equally important, and that the meaning of results, if it can be arrived at, is the light in which processes can be best understood. The question for philosophy is therefore not how the sense of moral obligation was evolved, but why it is now, and has been within historical times in existence, why social progress and well-being should depend on its active acceptance, why good so far as it is recognised is invariably felt to be that which 66 ought" to prevail whether or not it actually does so.

On the interpretation of the universe which we have accepted, the ultimate reason of its being what it is, as a whole and in all its parts, lies in the Divine Individuality being what it is. The universe which is the

IV.]

IN THE DIVINE NATURE

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outcome of the Divine Activity, bears the impress of the Divine Character, so that if finite spiritual beings recognise moral obligation, that is because it is recognised by the Infinite Spiritual Being of whom they are the offspring. It may seem at first sight as though the existence even of moral obligation in the Divine Nature were a limitation of its Infinitude. But this is not so. Involuntary restriction of whatever kind is indeed a note of the finite, but not that which is wholly voluntary, which is laid by Infinite Will on Infinite Activity. In the case of moral obligation, the supposed limitation is a result of Infinite Knowledge and Infinite Holiness. All the possibilities of good and evil being eternally present to God, good is eternally chosen, recognised as what ought to be, and evil eternally rejected, recognised as what ought not to be. In Biblical language God "knows good and evil,” but at the same time "He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity."

This admission-that evil is present to the Divine Consciousness though only to be loathed and rejected, for ever prohibits the identification of goodness in the sense of