24 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



anything is real, pain and sorrow and wrong are 

 realities. 



It would be a new thing in history if d priori 

 philosophers were daunted by the factious opposition 

 of experience ; and the Stoics were the last men to 

 allow themselves to be beaten by mere facts. ' Give 

 me a doctrine and I will find the reasons for it ' said 

 Chrysippus. So they perfected, if they did not in- 

 vent, that ingenious and plausible form of pleading, 

 the Theodicy ; for the purpose of showing firstly, 

 that there is no such thing as evil ; secondly, that 

 if there is, it is the necessary correlate of good ; 

 and moreover, that it is either due to our own fault, 

 or inflicted for our benefit. Theodicies have been 

 very popular in their time, and I believe that a 

 numerous, though somewhat dwarfed, progeny of 

 them still survives. So far as I know, they are all 

 variations of the theme set forth in those famous 

 six lines of the ' Essay on Man,' in which Pope sums 

 up Bolingbroke's reminiscences of stoical and other 

 speculations of this kind 



All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; 



All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; 



All discord, harmony not understood ; 



All partial evil, universal good ; 



And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 



One truth is clear : whatever is is right. 



Yet, surely, if there are few more important truths 

 than those enunciated in the first triad, the second is 

 open to very grave objections. That there is a ' soul 

 of good in things evil ' is unquestionable ; nor will 



