LEAF AND TENDRIL 



pertains only to man, and is incident to his growth 

 and development. To bear false witness against 

 one's neighbor, or to steal, or to be cruel or covet- 

 ous, are moral evils which we become conscious 

 of only when we have reached a higher moral 

 plane. The animal is not involved in such evils. 

 Violence and fraud and injustice attest the exist- 

 ence of higher qualities. They are shadows and 

 not real entities, the shortcomings of the unripe 

 animal man. A foul day is just as much a legiti- 

 mate part of our weather system as a fair day; 

 and is it in itself any more evil ? 



What I mean to say is that the whole category of 

 moral evils, from petty slander to gigantic stealing, 

 from political corruption to social debauchery, are 

 only eddies or back currents that attest the onward 

 flow of moral progress. A parasite is an evil, but it 

 could not exist without a host to prey upon. 



Moral evil, like physical evil, is bestowed by the 

 same hand that bestows the moral good; it is the 

 fruit of the same tree — the wormy and scabby 

 fruit — and while every effort is to be made to 

 remedy it, we are not to regard it as something 

 foreign to us, something the origin of which is in- 

 volved in mystery, a subject for metaphysical or 

 theological hair-splitting, and adequate to account 

 for the strained relations, as our fathers viewed it, 

 between God and man. Development implies im- 

 perfection ; as long as our course is upward, we have 

 270 



