ture, bent with "tooth and claw" upon annihilating one
or another form of existence, is quite indifferent to man's sense of
compassion and justice. Yet in the wise, though inscrutable plan of God
she does but serve the good. We see how the lower forms of life ever serve
the higher, how the mineral provides food for the vegetable, while the
animal derives its food from the vegetable world and from lower types of
animals. Thus each becomes a means of vitality for a higher species. So by
the continuous upward striving of man the lower passions, with their evil
tendencies, work more and more toward the triumph of the good. Man unfolds
his God-likeness; he strives to

"Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die."

7. The Biblical story of Creation expresses the perfect harmony between
God's purpose and His work in the words, "And behold, it was good" spoken
at the end of each day's Creation, and "behold, it was very good" at the
completion of the whole. A world created by God must serve the highest
good, while, on the contrary, a world without God would prove to be "the
worst of all possible worlds," as Schopenhauer, the philosopher of
pessimism, quite correctly concludes from his premises. The world-view of
Judaism, which regards the entire economy of life as the realization of
the all-encompassing plan of an all-wise Creator, is accordingly an
energizing optimism, or, more precisely, meliorism. This view is voiced by
the rabbis in many significant utterances, such as the maxim of R. Akiba,
"Whatsoever the Merciful One does, is for the good,"(427) or that of his
teacher, Nahum of Gimzo, "This, too, is for the good."(428) His disciple,
R. Meir, inferred from the Biblical verse, "God saw all that He had made,
and behold, it was very good," that "death, too, is good."(429) Others
considered that suffering and even sin are included in this verse, because
every apparent evil is necessary that we may struggle and overcome it for
the final victory of the good.(430) As an ancient Midrash says: "God is
called a God of faith and faithfulness, because it was His faith in the
world that caused Him to bring it into existence."(431)

Chapter XXV. Creation As the Act of God

1. "Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heavens
and the earth, these shall perish from the earth, and from under the
heavens. He that hath made the earth by His power, that hath established
the world