ation.

Every soul born into life must possess the attributes of taste,
reason, conscience and emotion. And each of these attributes
implies this fundamental duality; being resolvable into a choice
between hideousness, falsehood, evil, malice, and the opposites of
these. But the soul itself, being a living and personal thing, can
never, however deeply it plunges into evil, become the embodiment
of evil, because by the mere fact of existing at all it has
already defeated evil.

Any individual soul may give itself up to malice rather than to
love, and may do its utmost to resist the creative power of love.
But one thing it cannot do. It cannot become the embodiment of
evil, because, by merely being alive, it is the eternal defiance of
evil. Personality is the secret of the universe. The universe exists
by reason of a struggle between what creates and what resists
creation. Therefore personality exists by reason of a struggle
between what creates and what resists creation. And the existence
of personality, however desperate the struggle within itself may
be, is a proof that the power of life is stronger than the power
which resists life.

But we have to consider another and yet deeper dilemma. Since
the existence of the universe depends upon the continuance of this
unfathomable struggle and since the absolute victory of life over
death, of love over malice, of truth over falsehood, of beauty over
hideousness and of nobility over ignobility, would mean that the
universe would end, are we therefore forced to the conclusion that
evil is necessary to the fuller manifestation of good?

Undoubtedly we _are_ forced to this conclusion. Not one of these
primordial ideas, which find their synthesis in "the invisible
companions of men," can be conceived without its opposite. And
it is in the process of their unending struggle that the fuller
realization of all of them is attained. And this struggle must
inevitably assume a double character. It must assume the character
of a struggle within the individual soul and of a struggle of the
individual soul with other souls and with the universe. Such a
struggle must be thought of as continually maintained in the soul
of the "invisible companions of men" and maintained there with a
depth of dramatic intensity at which we can only guess.

Only less false and dangerous than the dogma that the absolute
victory of good over evil has already been achieved, is the dogma
that these two eter