Yarros, Victor S.

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NEW LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM OF EVILBY VICTOR S. YARROSF^ROM time to time, the Agnostic of the school of Spencer, Hux-ley, Tyndall, Haeckel, ct al, is impelled or compelled to restudythe so-called Problem of Evil. Liberal theologians and others con-tinue to wrestle manfully with that perplexing problem, and whenthey succeed in saying anything original or thought-provoking it isincumbent upon the advanced skeptical thinkers fairly and earnestlyto consider that contribution to an old, yet ever-new subject of thedeepest possible interest.Thus, Principal L. P. Jacks of Manchester, philosopher, meta-physician, editor, social radical and man of letters, has challengedattention among thoughtful persons by a series of lectures—pub-lished in book form—which he delivered some time ago at Oxfordon the subject of "Religious Perplexities." What Principal Jacksreally discusses in this little volume is the problem of evil, and hispoint of view is that of an enlightened, unconventional, candidChristian.Mr. Jacks never offers us dogma in place of ideas. He affectsno confidence which he does not feel. He is humble and tentative inhis conclusions, although those conclusions are of the utmost sig-nificance to him. Are they to other independent and liberal thinkers?A.nd is Mr. Jacks' method of reaching them scientific or philosophi-cal ? These are the questions we shall try to answer.First, however, let us call particular attention to the frank andcourageous spirit in which Mr. Jacks approaches the problem ofevil. He assumes, as it were, the full burden of proof. Heattempts no arbitrary simplification. He avoids no difficulty whichhe is able to perceive and underestimates none.Xi:\\' LIGHT ON THE PROP.r.I-:>[ OF i:\"H. 151For example, he disclaims any sympathy with those who havebeen saying that the great world war, from the disastrous effects ofwhich we are making no haste to recover, has emphasized in a newor exceptionally tragic way the problem of evil. He obser^•es withtruth that that notion is a Aery shallow one. The war was a terriblecalamity. l)ut it raised no new moral or spiritual problems. To quoteMr. Jacks:"We are sometimes told that the great war has enormouslyincreased the religious perplexities of mankind. T cannot seethat it has. All the problems it suggests, all the questions itraises, were equally contained in the lesser wars that went beforeit ; and even if the great one had never occurred, there wouldstill be enough suffering in the world to challenge the strongestfaith. An age which has needed the great war to rouse it to asense of tragedy must have been living in a fool's paradise.Every problem suggested by the great war has been there,plain for all ages to see, since suffering and death, folly andwickedness, first came into the world. . . . All that the greatwar can mean was summarized long ago by the man who sawthe 'whole creation groaning and traxailing in ])ain together tillnow !' "Dealing more generally with the same interesting and importantpoint— the utter lack of novelty in religious and moral perplexities-Mr. Jacks says further:"Too much is being made of the special difficulties besettingreligion at the passing moment— those, for example, connectedwith the progress of science and with the higher criticism— asthough this were the age of religious difficulty par excellence.Surely that is a mistake. Religious belief has always requiredthe full courage of the soul to sustain its high propositions. . . .What science and the higher criticism have done is to turn atten-tion upon new points, to divert perplexities into new channels,but not to alter their essential character, not to change the stufifof which they are made. The fact of evil is no discovery of thepresent age ; it has been challenging the faith of men for thou-sands of years ; there is nothing more poignant to be said about ittoday than was said ages ago by the patriarch Job. Sufiferingand death, the agony of bereavement, the tragedies of blighted152 THE OPEN COURThopes and shipwrecked Hves—these are not things pecuhar tothe twentieth century."How true all this is, and how well said!No ; there is nothing new in the religious and moral perplexitiesof the thoughtful and candid men and women of this day and gen-eration. But no generation is content to accept any solution of theproblem of evil which does not satisfy its own mind, or hit the markfrom its own particular point of view, or find expression in termsand accents which harmonize with its own habits of thought and itsown vague ivcltanschauung. Mr. Jacks is a representative of the mostprogressive and broad-minded Christian element of our time. Sincehe faces the old and ever-new problem bravely and manfully, hisattempt at a solution of it in new terms is, to repeat, calculated toarrest attention and provoke reflection.To begin with, Mr. Jacks does not promise any release from allreligious and moral perplexities, or any complete intellectual solutionof the problem of evil. A religion worthy of the name, he says, maygive release from some perplexities, perplexities that belittle us andplace us on a level on which the better part of our nature feelsuneasy and uncomfortable. Perplexities attributable to selfishness,timidity, meanness or envy vanish in the light and warmth of anyrational religion or philosophy. But, on the other hand, a rationalreligion— to quote ]Mr. Jacks:"Confronts us with perplexities on a higher level, where ourfiner essence finds the employment for which it is made. Insteadof hiding the great crises, instead of banishing them, instead ofgiving us anaesthetics to make us unconscious of their presence,religion reveals them, makes us aware of them, sharpens our con-sciousness of their presence, but at the same time reveals us toourselves as beings who are capable of overcoming them. If, onthe one hand, it uncovers the pain of life, and makes us feel itwith a new intensity, on the other it liberates the love that con-quers pain, a power mightier than death and sharper than agony."Mr. Jacks, as a Christian, advances the claim that Christianityrevealed us to ourselves in the person of Jesus, brought to light aside of our nature which the Old Testament and other great bookshad not sufficiently emphasized. This claim has been and will bechallenged by many adherents of other religious systems, and byNEW LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 153Agnostics and Atheists as well, but this is not the place to deal withthat purely incidental issue. The question of immediate interest tous is not whether Christianity in its essence is the most enlightenedand purest of all religions. Let it be admitted that Mr. Jacks' Chris-tianity is advanced, noble and pure as any religion professed by non-Christian sages and thinkers. The issue is whether any religionremoves the higher and graver perplexities and supplies an intel-ligible and significant solution of the problem of evil.To make Mr. Jacks' answer clear, we may quote a few morepassages:There is "that in all of us which stands above the perplexitiesof life and is more than a match for them ; which sees evil withthe clearest eye and at the same time overcomes it with the deep-est love. At home in the bright hours of life, which o-row brighterunder the radiance it pours into them, the Christ within is alwaysready wl'-en the dark ones arrive. T am equal to that,' he cries.'Through the power that is given me, through the fellowship Ihave with the heart of a divine universe. I can turn that evilinto good, and transfigure that sorrow into joy, and draw thestream of a deeper life from the very thing that threatens toslay me. . . ."On the surface of things there is discord, confusion and wantof adaptation ; but dig down, first to the center of the world, andthen to the center of your own nature, and you will find a mostwonderful correspondence, a most beautiful harmony, betweenthe two—the world made for the hero and the hero made forthe world."I may note in passing that Mr. Jacks' solution coincides withthat ofifered by ^Ir. Havelock Ellis in his chapter on religion in thenew work rather paradoxically entitled. "The Dance of Life." Mr.Ellis tells us in that quite disappointing chapter the story of his ownconversion to religious belief. He was an Agnostic in his youth anda self-complacent one. He had pondered the problem of evil andthe patent want of adaptation on this earth and was disposed toaccept the teachings of Huxley. Darwin, Tyndall and Spencer— par-ticularly the affirmation that the finite human mind can never knowwhat life is, or what the ultimate stuff of the universe is, or whetherthat stuff was created by some omniscient and omnipotent power, orwhat the destiny and purpose of the universe are. But the studv of154 THE OPEN COURTa neglected or unappreciated book of James Hinton suddenly openedhis eyes to the inadequacy and short-sightedness of Agnosticism, aswell as to the momentous truth that the universe was not hostile oreven indififerent tcj man— or, rather, to the best in man— but dis-tinctly friendly. In other words, there is something in the universewhich sympathizes with and responds to our better nature, our con-science, our sense of beauty, truth and goodness. To work withthat power becomes a pleasure, a privilege and a joy—and that isthe religious life and the law and prophets of sound religion.Let us now candidly and critically examine the Jacks-Ellis solu-tion of the problem of evil.The first question that inevitably arises in the independent mindis one of fact— namely, Is the universe friendly to man at his noblestand best ; is there the beautiful harmony discerned by Mr. Jacksbetween the heroic soul and the center of the universe—whateverand wherever that "center" is? Is it true that there is somethingin all of us which is capable of turning evil into good and transform-ing sorrow into joy?It is but fair to point out that both Principal Jacks and Mr. Ellisappeal to general experience, to the average man—provided he isnot a coward and prejudiced bigot— to "all of us." in short, or tomost of us. The claims of a few mystics or rare natures would, ofcourse, possess no evidential value. Either the few exceptionalnatures would be treated as a privileged class, a group of supermen,living on a plane never attainable by the overwhelming majority ofhuman beings, or else they would be simply disbelieved, suspectedof self-deception, delusions of moral grandeur, or arrogant self-righteousness and offensive vanity. Religion is for all of us or it isfor none capable of clear thinking and intelligent weighing of theevidence supplied by observation, self-examination and experimen-tation.Messrs. Jacks and Ellis assure the average man, then, in effect,that if he will assimilate and apply the teachings of Christ as theyare found in the new testament, his perplexities in connection withthe problem of evil will fade away and vanish, and that harmonyand beautiful adaptation will replace all apparent discord, maladjust-ment and heart-rending waste and woe. He will see that the uni-verse is friendly, that evil can be turned into good and anguish intogladness.NEW LIGHT OX TliK PROBLEM: OE EVIL 155Let us put ourselves in the shoes of the average man and con-sider certain concrete instances:An early-morning fire destroys an orphan asylum, or a hospitalfor the insane, or a home for helpless cripples, and hundreds of livesare lost.An earthquake suddenly wipes out thousands or tens of thou-sands of human and sub-human beings and inflicts misery and painon other multitudes of human beings, besides turning hard-wonwealth and capital into rubbish heaps.A cyclone or tidal wave overwhelms a city and takes heavy tollof life—adult and infant.Cancer kills hundreds of thousands of men and women of mid-dle age—bread winners, mothers of families in need of care andprotection.Thousands of women in the most advanced communities die,despite the best medical and scientific ministration, while giving birthto normal children.Tens of thousands of infants die annually of "children's diseases"which are apparently unpreventable.Here are perfectly familiar illustrations of evil and maladapta-tion. How Avill the most faithful observance of Jesus' teachingstransform them into good, and draw life, inspiration, hope and joyfrom them? How does the friendly attitude toward the universereconcile one to appalling waste and cruel sufifering?In vain will the anxious inquirer seek direct answers to thesequeries in Mr. Jacks' or \lr. Ellis" pages. The indirect answer hewill glean is this : Lose yourself in service, forget your personal sor-row, work indefatigably for the physical and spiritual welfare ofyour unfortunate neighbors and fellowmen, and sooner or laterpeace, serenity and contentment will pervade your whole being. "Beready" ; be cheerful and stoical ; be hopeful and your life will beworth living.There is truth— vital and significant truth— in this indirectanswer, but that truth affords no solution of the problem of evil.Intellectually speaking, it is not really relevant to that problem.Service, the losing of self in useful and beneficial work, charity andenlightened benevolence unquestionably yield more satisfaction thana selfish, sordid, loveless, life ; but it does not turn evil into good,does not transfigure sorrow into joy, does not draw life from sources156 THE OPEN COURTof destruction and death. Evil remains evil; zvaste remains ivaste;undeserved suffering and pain remain undeserving suffering andpain.Indeed, the effort to abolish evil, while worthy of all encourage-ment and commendation— even from the narrower point of view ofHedonism—and the will to make or support such effort arc them-selves proofs that evil continues to he envisaged and felt as evil.Otherwise, why work to abolish or diminish it?It is far more logical to argue that, since the universe is friendly,and the ultimate Purpose behind it positive and beneficent, evilshould be treated as disguised good, and accepted with absoluteresignation, than it is to contend that, because the best in us is stirredby what appears to us to be evil and waste, and because there isinner satisfaction in service and altruistic conduct generally, there-fore our perplexities are dispelled and the problem of evil is happilysolved.And this brings us to the second important point. Messrs. Jacksand Ellis oft'er us a moral solution of an intellectual problem. Thisis hardly legitimate. We ask them to explain evil on the theory ofa friendly universe, a beneficent Purpose in creation, and they tellus that, if we devote our lives to service, to the overcoming andabolition of evil, the mystery is solved, the perplexity removed.How ? Principal Jacks speaks of mere anaesthetics so often pro-.posed by superficial theologians or conventional moralists as reme-dies for human ills ; he fails to see that he lays himself open to thecharge of doing precisely the same thing— of suggesting social serv-ice, active sympathy and charity, as a means of escape from religiousand moral perplexities. He fails to perceive that the missionary, thesettlement worker, the sincere reformer, the martyr only combat par-ticular evils, and find solace in doing so, without denying cither toothers or to themselves the fact or problem of evil!It should be borne in mind that the Pragmatist and Agnostic,who find no evidence of friendliness to man in the universe, or ofcomprehensible Purpose in creation, though perfectly willing toentertain the Jacks-Ellis hypothesis, provided adequate proof be fur-nished in its behalf, reach the same moral and practical conclusionsas Messrs. Jacks and Ellis in their own way. The Agnostic andPragmatist say that they can form no conception of Universal Pur-Xi:\V LIGHT ON THE PROBLEM OF EX'H, 157pose, or of omniscience and omnipotence, and that all the availableevidence of astronomy, gt^ology, and other sciences points to cosmicindifference to poor humanity, or to organic life generally as knownon this little planet. Rut they do not deny that the best in us isresponsive to human and animal need of succor and sympathy, andthat the happiest life, irrespective of creeds, beliefs and theoriesregarding ultimates, is the life of disinterested service, of pursuit oftruth and promotion of justice and good will. The Agnostic andPragmatist, taking a frankly human view of the human situation,affirm that, whether the universe be friendly, indifferent or hostileto man, our own experience and reason tell us that the way to inwardpeace and rational happiness lies through the realization of ourevolved and evolving ideals of fraternity and nnitual aid. Do Messrs.Jacks and Ellis imply that, but for the hypothesis of Purpose andfriendliness in the universe, the good and noble life would be impos-sible for man, or futile, or irrational? One cannot think so; but,in that case, why assume the friendliness of the universe at all indealing with a moral and practical question, the question of the bestmeans of human fulfillment and self-realization, the question of get-ting the maximum out of life?It is to be feared that neither Principal Jacks nor Mr. Ellis hasfaced the intellectual aspect of the problem of evil with the clear-sightedness and single-mindedness it requires. They are not calledupon to supply mystical proof in support of the gospel of serviceand the good life ; that gospel is amply fortified by universal experi-ence. What they are called upon to do is to treat the problem ofevil scientifically, to offer a solution of it, if they can, which shallbe intellectually satisfactory and free from question-begging prem-ises or gratuitous conclusions. Whatever we may disagree upon,we must all recognize that in dealing with so ancient a problem asthat of evil, our first and last duty, as upright, self-respecting think-ers, is to eschew rhetoric and vague phrase-making, to reject pseud-ideas and to demand of one another real ideas, significant proposi-tions, as well as the production of proper and sufficient evidence insupport of any theory we may tentatively advance.The present writer has no intention of asserting dogmaticallythat there is no solution of the problem of evil. There may be onebut if there is, it is scientific, not sentimental. Religion may furnisli158 THE OPEN COURTsuch a solution, but that rehgion will itself be based on science andreason. So far, it is clear, science has ofifered no solution of theproblem of evil. Religions and theological thinkers have too oftenoffered verbal and superficial solutions. With such, serious andhigh-minded men and women cannot rest content. They eagerly wel-come every honest attempt at a solution and are grateful for a hint,a ray of light, a working theory at all fruitful and based on tangibleevidence.

New Light on the Problem of Evil.

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New Light on the Problem of Evil.

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