is
that it is 'best' that this arrangement, and no other, should exist. It
is also the foundation of Kant's well-known contention that, however
barren speculative theology and psychology may be, the reality of the
moral order and the unconditionality of moral obligation compel us to
make the existence of God, the immortality of our souls, and the moral
government of the world postulates of practical philosophy. More
generally, it is just this conviction that 'what is' has its source and
explanation in what 'ought to be', which is the central thought of all
philosophical Theism. If we can accept such a faith, we shall not, of
course, be enabled to eliminate mystery from things. We shall, for
instance, be still quite in the dark about the way in which evil comes
to be in a world of God's making. We shall neither be able to say _how_
any particular thing comes to be other than it ought to be, nor _how_ in
the end good is 'brought out of evil'. But if we are to have a right to
hold a view of the Platonic or Theistic type, we must be able, not
indeed to say how evil comes about or how it is to be finally got rid
of, but to say, in a general way, what it is 'good for'. Thus, if there
are certain goods of the highest value which could not exist at all
except on the condition of the existence of less important evils, this
consideration will remove, so far as _those_ goods and evils are
concerned, the time-honoured puzzle how evil can exist at all if God is.
To take a specific example. To many of us it appears directly certain
that such qualities of character as fortitude, patience, superiority to
carnal lusts, magnanimity, are goods of the highest value. We think also
that we see that these qualities are not primitive psychological
endowments but require for their development the experience of struggle
and discipline in a world where there is real suffering, real
disappointment, real temptation. To us, therefore, there seems to be no
contradiction between the existence of God and the presence in a world
made by God of the evils needed for the development of these virtues.
And this will include some of the worst of all the evils we know of. Few
things are more ghastly than some of the cruelties which have been
practised in the late War and are still being practised in the
distracted country of Russia. Yet we know how revulsion from these
horrors has made many a man who seemed to be sunk in sloth or greed or
carnality into a Bayar