n return for this, there is no being that is absolutely imperfect,
none only and entirely evil. With this is joined the well-known principle
of the earlier thinkers, that evil is nothing actual, but merely
deprivation, absence of good, lack of clear reason and force of will. That
which is real in the evil action, the power to act, is perfect and good,
and, as force, comes from God--the negative or evil element in it comes
from the agent himself; just as in the case of two ships of the same size,
but unequally laden, which drift with the current, the speed comes from the
stream and the retardation from the load of the vessels themselves. God
is not responsible for sin, for he has only permitted it, not willed it
directly, and man was already evil before he was created. The fact that God
foresaw that man would sin does not constrain the latter to commit the
evil deed, but this follows from his own (eternal) being, which God left
unaltered when he granted him existence. The guilt and the responsibility
fall wholly on the sinner himself. The permission of evil is explained by
the predominantly good results which follow from it (not, as in physical
evil, for the sufferer himself, but for others)--from the crime of Sextus
Tarquinius sprang a great kingdom with great men (of. the beautiful myth in
connection with a dialogue of Laurentius Valla, _Theodicy,_ iii. 413-416).
Finally, reference is made again to the contribution which evil makes to
the perfection of the whole. Evil has the same function in the world as the
discords in a piece of music, or the shadows in a painting--the beauty is
heightened by the contrast. The good needs a foil in order to come out
distinctly and to be felt in all its excellence.

In the Leibnitzian theodicy the least satisfactory part is the
justification of moral evil. We miss the view defended in such grand
outlines by Hegel, and so ingeniously by Fechner, that the good is not
the flower of a quiet, unmolested development, but the fruit of energetic
labor; that it has need of its opposite; that it not merely must approve
itself in the battle against evil without and within the acting subject,
but that it is only through this conflict that it is attainable at all.
Virtue implies force of will as well as purity, and force develops only
by resistance. Although he does not appreciate the full depth of the
significance of pain, Leibnitz's view of suffering deserves more approval
than his questionable ap