ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



head of animate nature, but the rest of creation is 

 no more exclusively for him than for the least of 

 living things. The good of the world is for whatever 

 or whoever can use it. Houseflies are undoubtedly 

 the enemy of the human race; so are mosquitoes, so 

 are venomous snakes, so are many forms of bacteria, 

 and a thousand other things. Our egotism prompts 

 us to ask, "Why is evil in the world, anyhow?" But 

 our evil may be the good of some other creature. 

 Our defeat means the triumph of our enemy. It is 

 through this conflict of good and evil, or of things 

 that are for us with things that are against us, that 

 species are developed and perpetuated. 



What kind of a world would it be without what 

 we call evil, without hindrances? To the farmer 

 drought, flood, tornadoes, untimely frosts are evils 

 which he thinks he could well dispense with, but 

 so far as they make a greater struggle necessary, so 

 far as they lead to more self-denial, greater fore- 

 thought, and so on, they are good in disguise. 

 Hardy, virile characters, like tough timber, in oaks, 

 are developed by unfriendly and opposing forces. 

 Intemperance, greed, cheating, lying, war, are evils 

 in the social and business world; but they teach us 

 the value of their opposites. We react from them. It 

 is a child's question to ask, for example, "Would 

 the world not have been better had there never been 

 any war?" because, since mankind is what it is, 

 wars are inevitable. The absence of wars, as of in- 



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