Intemperance,  greed,  cheating,  lying,  war,  are  evils
in  the  social  and  business  world;  but  they  teach  us
the  value  of  their  opposites.  We  react  from  them.  It
is  a  child's  question  to  ask,  for  example,  "Would
the  world  not  have  been  better  had  there  never  been
any  war?"  because,  since  mankind  is  what  it  is,
wars  are  inevitable.  The  absence  of  wars,  as  of  in-
32


EACH  FOR  ITS  OWN  SAKE

temperance,  greed,  cheating,  implies  a  different
mankind,  and  a  different  mankind  implies  a  differ-
ent system  of  things.
The  problem  of  evil  is  the  problem  of  life;  no  evil,
no  life.  The  world  is  thus  made.  Nature  is  not  half
good  and  half  bad;  she  is  wholly  good,  or  wholly
bad,  according  to  our  relation  to  her.  Fire  and  flood
are  bad  when  they  master  us,  and  good  when  we
master  and  control  them.  Great  good  has  come  out
of  war,  and  great  evil.  The  evil  always  tends  to  drop
out  or  be  obliterated,  as  the  path  of  cyclones  and
earthquakes  tend  to  be  overgrown  and  forgotten.
Burned  cities  often  rise  from  their  ashes  to  new  life.
The  effects  of  evil  are  finally  obliterated;  malignant
forces  have  their  day,  benignant  forces  go  on  for-
ever. The  world  of  life,  let  me  repeat,  would  not  be
here  were  not  the  balance  of  the  account  of  good
and  evil  on  the  side  of  the  good,  or  if  good  did  not
come  out  of  evil.
