THE GOOD DEVILS 



and not absolute good. There is no absolute good 

 any more than there is absolute heat or cold or 

 height or depth. 



We work our way through the mazes and contra- 

 dictions of things — contradictions from our point 

 of view — as best we can, eliminating the bad and 

 cleaving unto the good, but the total scheme of 

 things, the reconciliations and compensations and 

 final results, we can never grasp. We cannot abate 

 our war upon evil, because we have our well-being 

 on these terms, but evil is indirectly the father of 

 good. 



v 



All religious and ethical systems grow out of our 

 egoism. We plant ourselves in the middle of the 

 universe and say it is all for us. We make gods in 

 our own image, we invent a heaven for the good and 

 a hell for the wicked, and seek to keep down the 

 brute within us by a system of rewards and punish- 

 ments. We improve our minds and souls as we im- 

 prove the fields; we make them more fair and fertile, 

 but we do not eliminate Nature; with her own 

 weapons we improve our relations to her — we pro- 

 mote our good, but we are still Nature's; the harvest 

 we reap is still Nature's. Our improvements upon 

 her are mere removal of obstructions from the rill 

 that gushes perennially from her prolific earth. We 

 improve her fruits, her flowers, her animals — that 



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