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BOOK V

RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

I

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL¹

As the five phases of babyhood, childhood, youth, manhood and maturity are marked steps in the journey of individual life, so are the five historic doctrines of the cause and cure of evil remarkable in the progressive development of the life of mankind. They may be denominated the ante-human, the inter-human, the super-human, the spiritual and the harmonial. In the individual and the race, implicit and immeasurable faith characterise the flower of infancy. The thinking principle, the human mind is folded lovingly within the heart. The earliest theology or doctrine of God was monotheistic, but that God was concealed and incomprehensible. He accomplished in the hiddenness every good and evil thing. One was the smile of His mouth, the other the frown of His brow. With one hand He recompensed the righteous, with the other He punished the guilty. Hence in this theory God has no compeers upon whom to impose the origin and cause of evil.²

¹ See the volume under this title passim.
² There is an alternative presentation of the subject in The Principles of Nature, according to which the primitive peoples believed that certain winds which came from above not only breathed among them a malignant element but inspired them with evil thoughts. This was the first conception as to the origin of evil, an opinion prevailing for many ages.

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Why the unfathomable Deity sent into the world disease, misery and death was no question to be entertained by man. According to the ante-human theory evil came from God, and the cure consisted in sacrifice, to placate the imaginary wrath which lived and worked in secret behind the stars.

We come now to the second development, corresponding to the childhood of the race and called here the inter-human theory, characterised by a doctrine of fatalism. It held that all evil is a necessity of human existence and that man was the helpless subject of fortuitous circumstances. To the question who made necessity the philosophers of this period answered—The Fates, personified forces regarded as intelligent and sacred. The doctrine of many gods replaced monotheism. As time went on, in the plenitude of mythological developments, every known human state and circumstance had assigned to it a particular superintending deity. The suggested cure of evil was happiness, bodily ease, mental tranquillity, sensuous delight.

But the aggregate life of mankind graduated from childhood into the flush and surge of youth and so felt the sublime emotion of self-containing power. At this particular juncture originated the doctrine that man is a free moral agent. A proud feeling of individual

The cause of these winds—when causes began to be investigated—was held to be an unseen, undefinable, evil spirit or deity which either had the atmosphere for its habitation or was itself that medium. Being antagonistic to humanity, he destroyed their social love and instilled a spirit of envy, hatred and deception. At a later period, the cause and source of evil was transferred from the atmosphere to the sun itself, which was regarded as the countenance of an angry and unholy being who poisoned the air, and this poison entered into those who breathed it. Still later, certain Eastern tribes conceived of a spirit existing between them and the Good Deity, thus establishing a barrier to their communications with the Divine. It continued to prevail up to the time of Zoroaster, who established a faith in two antagonistic, eternal Beings, presiding over good and evil, and having distinct natures corresponding to these principles.—Op. cit., pp. 378, 379, 411. See pp. 219 et seq. of this digest.

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responsibility supplanted slavish subserviency to outer circumstances. Herein was originated the superhuman theory of evil, and with it a return to the doctrine of one God, one Maker of laws; but man—on whom they are imposed—can disobey, and can take the cost and consequences. It was fabled that evil and misery began with a war of the angels waged in the very presence of God, long ages prior to the advent of man upon this globe. As regards our own race, every individual is wilfully wicked and personally responsible. But the Eternal Bosom was boundless in the quality of mercy and longed to exercise this saving attribute if man would but allow Him. Thus was inaugurated a system of superhuman medicine to cure evils of superhuman origin. It was an ecclesiastical hypothesis altogether, a scheme of arbitrary benefits and penalties revealed in an arbitrary manner by an arbitrary God, to accomplish the arbitrary ends of Divine Government.¹

The soul of the race in its manhood realises something of its mundane business and celestial destiny. The spiritual theory of evil—which belongs to this state— regards the fact of established intercommunication between the seen and the unseen worlds as a panacea for human misery. It affirms that our good and evil affections attract corresponding qualities and influences from the Spirit Land. Wilfully wicked affections, with those imposed and inherited prior to the possibility of willing, obtain their pabulum from spiritual fountains. Voluntary drunkards and voluptuaries become mediums

¹ The counter-opinion of Davis as to the origin of evil does not deal with the problem. He finds no intrinsic corruption in the soul of man because that soul comes from the Infinite Fountain of goodness and love. So-called evil and sin are therefore external, not from the soul in its essences but from that which he terms superficial sources. As to these, he says that the primary sources of evil are hereditary organisation, a statement which obviously explains nothing and justifies nothing in the great economy of things. Man is just what his organisation compels him to be.—See The Present Age and Inner Life, pp. 333, 334.

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for the gratification of unsatiated appetites which survive the ordeal of death. Hereditary viciousness is believed by many to be confirmed and stimulated by wicked spirits, while spirits of goodness, purity and truth exert all their power to inspire man's better nature, to rescue also and to elevate. To this theory the remedies are attached logically, as follows: (1) Belief in personal immortality, (2) sitting in circles for demonstrations, (3) becoming mediums for communications, (4) prayer for silent communications, (5) personal goodness based upon willing affection for moral and religious truth, (6) spiritual education of the young, (7) abstinence from all constructive reforms, except for religious development, (8) allowing personal evils and national injustices to have their perfect work, (9) belief in the continual supervision of a personal God, (10) belief in special providences on the part of God and of His angels, (11) waiting for celestial powers to inaugurate—in some sudden, supernatural, universal manner—the long prayed for kingdom of heaven on earth.

But we arrive finally at the Harmonial Theory, corresponding to the maturity of the race. Its watch-words are Association, Progression, Development; its principles are Love, Wisdom, Liberty, Justice, Happiness. To that Truth which is eternal, backward as well as forward, it has recourse reverently to search out the origin of evil.¹ But it finds that absolute goodness

¹ It being recognised that there is no absolute evil, considered as a principle, it follows that apparent evil is merely the misapplication of good laws. By the powerful impulsions of our passional forces we may bring good natural laws and pure substances into false relations and thus develop pain, disease, discords, dissatisfactions, dissolution and death.—The Great Harmonia, Vol. IV, p. 59. Two things are certain in this connection: (1) That few people are nowadays concerned with affirming a principle of evil in the sense of the old Persian religion, and (2) that no one disposes of the fact which we term evil by explaining that it signifies misapplication. The sins which cry to heaven for vengeance do not cry less loudly when they are labelled with another denomination.

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is the only element about the Holy Centre and that no earthly intelligence can separate the Eternal Mind from the Laws of Nature. These universal Laws flow through all gradations of being, with that immutable strength and precision which characterise the Central Fountain of Mind. They are the vital principles by which the Divine Mind is organised and regulated for ever. They are summed up concisely within and written legibly without on the human constitution. They ultimate into grades of countless variety, while in each of them the varieties of life and diversities of organisation are innumerable. This truth underlies the Harmonial Philosophy of Evil— a Word of God heard in the garden of the universe. These differences necessitate parallel dissimilarities of quality, position and office in the empire of animation. We discover that elemental wars and physical changes in earth, water and air are indispensable to human progress. So also, in the human race, social inequalities and national conflicts are essential and necessitated by the divine laws of Association, Progression and Development. The intrinsic usefulness of evil is plain as the sun at noon, though the soul of more limited vision will be fired with holy indignation at words like these. Let it grasp intelligently the discrete spheres and graduated planes unfolded by the divine laws, or setting aside an intellectual perception of all this unity let the soul picture the stupendous truth, and it will be on fire with another zeal. In the lower world of ignorant strife whatever is, is wrong, while on the Harmonial Mountain whatever is, is right—or is in process of becoming better. Those who stand thereon can behold with what beautiful certainty "ever the right comes uppermost and ever is justice done."

There are two hostile forces¹: (1) The wilful and

¹ The whole subject is treated differently in another place, where Davis begins by saying that the Laws of Nature are not creations or institutions, but emanations and things inherent. They do not tell us

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ignorant; (2) the selfish and educated. Among their various aspects are peace versus war, liberty versus slavery, truth versus error, virtue versus vice. Between these pairs of opposites there is light on the origin of evil, thus: Sin is the child of evil, evil is the child of error, error is the child of ignorance, ignorance is the first condition of an immortal being whose whole existence is regulated by Association, Progression and Development. On this sequence may be superposed another, as follows. The existence of individual beings necessitates positions in space; positions in space necessitate various conditions, and these involve corresponding circumstances; but circumstances mould the individual to their image and likeness, either good or evil. Evil is the temporal subversion or misdirection of absolute and omnipresent good, and good became inverted by man's ignorance and

what God thinks or wills, but rather how He lives, how He must inevitably and immutably act. It is argued herefrom that if a single law belonging to the constitution of God could be infringed upon, violated or suspended, the Divine Being Himself would be threatened, as well as the universe, with disorganisation and chaos. To speak therefore of man violating this or that law—though Davis confesses that he has used such language frequently—tends to impart wrong conceptions of God, as also of our human powers. Thence he proceeds to consider whether sin is a transgression of the law and affirms that such a proposition is both fallacious and pernicious, recurring at this point to his previous debate respecting the immutability of law. He then goes on to say that there is no evil in the world, but there are conditions to be changed. So also there are no essential falsehoods, for all these are relative, and it is a question of degrees and conditions. Truths and falsehoods are but changes rung upon certain absolute entities, being objects, impressions and reflections. Error falls under the denomination of variations from the central line of coincidence between object and subject, and is only a negational condition of truth. There is one law of exaggeration and another of diminution, and these—considered by themselves—are no less essentially perfect than the law of harmony between objective and subjective realities. In telling what is termed a falsehood man substitutes either the law of diminution or else that of exaggeration for the middle law of harmony between things and ideas.—See The Great Harmonia, Vol. IV, pp. 15-22.

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error. Ignorance is the predecessor of knowledge, and man began therein because he is designed for endless progress. Evil is the dust and incident of our pilgrimage through the wilderness of experience. Ignorance is a negative or passive fulcrum upon which the intellectual lever of spiritual progress acts with an almighty and universal sweep. Individual accountability is not destroyed by this doctrine. Justice, liberty, purity, love, wisdom, truth, progress, happiness are laws which no man can violate; but he has power to comply or not with those varied temporal conditions by means of which these principles carry forward the stupendous business of the Univercoelum. Man's willing faculties give him unlimited mastery over relations and conditions, but against the fixed laws of the physical and spiritual universe he can do absolutely nothing. He has no physical or mental power either to create or destroy, but to modify and change only. Herein consequently is found his individual and associative accountability.

In the limpid light of this philosophy the long-perplexing problem of free agency is solved. Man is seen to be at once a subject and a power, an integral child of eternal dependence, but at the same time master of his individual vineyard. As such he is able to impair or prevent his own happiness, as also to deprive others of their temporal rights and local liberties. From this standpoint we can perceive the origin of the doctrine of praise and blame, with the evolution therefrom of so many vindictive codes, so many tyrannical institutions and depraving plans of punishment. We can understand why one who obeys the fixed laws is beloved as a saint, while he who transgresses them is hated and condemned as a sinner. Lastly, we can see why it is that implacably hostile forces disturb the world's progress and why transient antagonisms seem to postpone the realisation of universal peace.

Let us now define our position on the whole subject

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in summary form. We repudiate the theory that evil was originally premeditated and sent among men by the Divine Mystery, and yet there is a truth within it which no mind can reject. We repudiate the theory that evil is a hopeless fatality of the physical universe, and yet there is a truth herein which all should accept. We repudiate the theory that man is capable of violating God's otherwise immutable laws, and yet in this doctrine we admit an approximation to reality. We repudiate the theory that man's affections rule his thoughts and attract corresponding controlling influences from the Spirit Land; yet we do not close our eyes to the solemn validity of its fundamental law. Finally, we accept the harmonial theory of evil—that man is designed for a career of endless progression, to which all evils and sufferings are incidental, temporal and educational, working out, when not abused, "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."¹

¹ There must be added to this the doctrine of a thesis which—in one or another aspect—is presented more than once by Davis. It affirms that the mental and physical constitution of man is harmonious, perfect and divine in its nature—meaning probably, essential or original nature. The reason is that it represents that Great Cause from which it originated. The deceptions, dissimulations and other evils in the world—and in ourselves also, presumably—do not flow from the interior of man's nature, but are a consequence of his unholy, imperfect and vitiated situation. The interior, which is of divine origin, cannot be made evil nor contaminated.—The Principles of Nature, p. 410. Finally, The Approaching Crisis has a very long section on the "true origin of evil," which unfortunately loses itself among criticisms of Christian theology and the story of the fall of man, so that it scarcely touches on the real issues of its subject. It disposes of diseases, wars, and other cruelties by affirming that they are consequences of progressive development in Nature. It affirms that evil is an arbitrary term applied to inequalities and misdirections when these have been outgrown and that as regards positive evil it does not exist, (a) because there is more harmony than discord, (b) more heat than cold, (c) more light than darkness, while (d) nothing is absolutely devoid of goodness. It is obvious that the problem is evaded in a consideration of this kind.