CHAPTER IV 



THE REALISATION OF THE SOVEREIGN GOOD 



IN evolution as thus understood, the evidence for the 

 progressive realisation of sovereign good is over- 

 whelming. 



Rationalistic pessimism follows naturally on a view 

 of the universe, which, being only partial, is also false. 

 A more extended and complete view leads to the quite 

 opposite conclusion of optimist idealism. 



This synthetic outlook solves, once and for all, the 

 problem of evil. 



In the first place, the definite, positive, and absolute 

 character attributed to evil is inconsistent with the 

 whole palingenetic idea. Evil has only a relative meaning 

 and is always reparable. 



Take, for instance, the greatest of seeming evils 

 Death. 



Not only is Death no longer ' the King of Terrors,' 

 but it is no longer the * curse ' which man, limited by 

 the physical body and blinded by the illusion of matter, 

 has made it. 



In palingenetic evolution death is an evil only when 

 it is premature and traverses or retards individual 

 evolution. 



Intercalated between successive lives, and coming at 

 its due time when the organism has given all it can give, 

 Death is the great minister of orderly evolution. As 

 has been already explained, the individual is thereby 

 afforded many successive fields 'of action, thus avoiding 

 a one-sided development of consciousness. Death has 

 also another function not less useful, though the blindness 

 of man generally refuses to understand its necessity or 



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