The hidden root. I The Presence of Evil Beneath all the particular forms of evil that exist in the world, men have always recognized a common ground of evil in human nature. Something has happened to the race, something has entered into it and taken possession of its vital powers, which makes it bring forth bad fruit. This is not a theory. It is a fact. The experience of mankind, thus far, is a mass of cumulative evidence that there is a radical twist in humanity which runs through it from top to bottom, and produces crooked results in every sphere of human life. So far as we can judge by our own experience, and by observation of others, every child of man who comes to moral consciousness, comes not only with a freedom of will which makes the choice of evil possible, but also with a propensity which makes such a choice probable. This probability is so strong that we always reckon with it, in dealing with ourselves or with others. No man gets fairly started in the journey of life without knowing that he has a tendency to go wrong. It is the folly of the fool that he forgets it. The wise man remembers, fears, and tries to guard against it. Human society is organized around two facts: Society on the desire of good and the recognition of evil. guard. Every institution in the world which is of any value has in it a defensive, corrective, punitory side, which is an unconscious confession that mankind is prone to do wrong. Men take this for granted in all the relations of life. Whether they are making systems of education or of government, whether they are devising enterprises to increase their property, or laws to protect it, or wills to distribute it, they always take into account the fact that there is a strain of evil running through all humanity. The advance of modern science and philos- The warnophy has not reduced or weakened the evidence ing of philosophy. of this common ground of evil in the world. On the contrary, it has done much to deepen and intensify the conviction that there is a radical twist in human nature. The easy-going and superficial optimism of the eighteenth century is thoroughly discredited and obsolete. Men have turned away from Rousseau's skindeep philosophy of the "original goodness and unlimited perfectibility" of human nature, to the profounder view of the Hebrew prophets, the Greek dramatists, Dante's Divine Comedy, The testimony of Science. Shakespeare's Hamlet, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, the great poetry of all lands and ages, the clearer, deeper, sadder view, which sees the mysterious shadow resting on the life of man, and traces the lines of conflict, disaster, and death that run through human history, back to their origin in the gulf which separates man's moral character from the divine ideal. Science, with its new theory of evolution, puts a stern emphasis upon the strength of the ties which bind man to the brute. It lays bare the workings of the selfish, sensual, egotistical impulses in the career of the race. It lengthens the cords and strengthens the stakes of the fatal net of heredity which holds all men together in an entanglement of defects of nature and taints of blood. "I know of no study," wrote Professor Huxley, "which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity as set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes; a blind prey to impulses which as often as not lead him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toil and battle. He attains a certain degree of comfort, and develops a more or less workable theory of life in such favourable situations as the plains of Mesopotamia or of Egypt, and then for thousands and thousands of years struggles with various fortunes, attended by infinite wickedness, bloodshed, and misery, to maintain himself at this point against the greed and ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved a step farther he foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet farther."1 This was written by a teacher of science, for a periodical called The Nineteenth Century. If it had been uttered by a Hebrew prophet, in the sixth century before Christ, it could not give a darker picture of human nature. of evil. Modern philosophy is permeated with the Pessimism flavour of pessimism, -the bitter tincture drawn the tincture from the twisted, tangled roots of sorrowful perversity which underlie the life of man. Modern literature is haunted by the persistent spectre of evil, which "will not down." "Agnosticism." 1 The Nineteenth Century, Feb., 1889. C The folly of ignoring evil. A novel by Zola, or Turgenieff, or Thomas Gloomy as such a view of life is, unmitigated by any real explanation of its mysterious ailment, unillumined by any hope of its cure, there is still something wholesome and medicinal in it. It is better to know the saddest truth than to be blinded by the merriest lie. The sober, stern-browed pessimism which looks the darkness in the face is sounder and more heroic than the frivolous, fat-witted optimism which turns its back, and shuts its eyes, and laughs. Man, indeed, is framed to live and rise by hope. But a hope which begins by denying the facts is a false hope whose path leads upward a few steps-to the edge of a precipice of deeper despair. The Bridge-Builders in Rudyard Kipling's story would have been fools if they had tried to accomplish their work by ignoring the steady downward thrust of gravitation, or shutting their eyes to the destructive rage of the Gangesflood. No less foolish is the man who tries to build 1 Jer. xvii. 9. |