Chapter 4, Section 1q

In this passage “Non-Existent” is used in three senses: (1) “Matter,” or force, cannot exist without some form (which is its complement) and therefore is technically called non-existent. (2) Evil cannot exist at all on the ultimate plane of Being, nor in this world without an admixture of good (which is its contrary) and therefore is in an absolute sense non-existent. (3) The Good is beyond all existence and therefore is by transcendence Non-Existent. —if this is so, how is it that the company of the devils desires not the Beautiful and Good, but, being inclined towards matter and fallen far from the fixed angelic state of desire for the Good, becomes a cause of all evils to itself and to all other beings which we describe as becoming evil? How is it that the devils, having been produced wholly out of the Good, are not good in disposition? Or how is it that, if produced good from out of the Good, they became changed? 325 325 The Good is beyond this world and beyond the stuff, or force, of which this world is made. Evil, on the other hand, is below this world and the stuff composing it. Get rid of the limitations in this world ( sc. the difference between one quality and another) and you have an energy or force possessing all the particular qualities of things fused in one. Get rid of the limitations inherent in this ( i. e. intensify it to infinity) and you have the Good. On the other hand, destroy some particular object ( e.g. a tree), and that object, being now actually non-existent, has still a potential existence in the world-stuff. Destroy that potential existence and you have absolute non-existence, which is Evil. Thus the three grates may be tabulated as follows: (i) Transcendent Non-Existence (= the Good). (ii) Actual Non-Existence (=the world stuff, force or energy, of which material particles are a form. Modern science teaches that atoms have no actual existence. Thus the atomic theory has worked round to something very much like D’s theory of the non-existent world stuff). (iii) Absolute Non-Existence (= Evil). The three grades might be expressed by a numerical symbol as follows: If finite numbers represent the various forms of existence, the Infinity (which contradicts the laws of finite numbers) = the Good: Unity (which is a mere abstraction and cannot exist apart from multiplicity since every finite unit is divisible into parts) = the world stuff: Zero (which annihilates all finite numbers that are multiplied by it) = Evil. What made them 111 evil, and indeed what is the nature of evil? From what origin did it arise and in what thing doth it lie? Why did He that is Good will to produce it? And how, having so willed, was He able so to do? 326 326 The argument in the rest of the section is as follows: Evil exists, for there is a radical difference between virtue and vice. Evil is, in fact, not merely negative, but positive: not merely destructive, but also productive. And hence it is necessary to the perfection of the world. To which D. replies in the next section that evil does not exist qua evil, nor is it positive or productive qua evil. It exists and is positive and productive solely through an admixture of the Good. (We might illustrate this by the fact that Zero, multiplied by Infinity, produces finite number.) And if evil comes from some other cause, what other cause can anything have excepting the Good? How, if there is a Providence, doth evil exist, or arise at all, or escape destruction? And why doth anything in the world desire it instead of Good?” 19. Thus perhaps will such bewildered discourse speak.