ch rebellion, if you waive the absurdity for the
moment and consider the possibility, God would be responsible; for he
made him. The whole theory is not only absurd: it is unjust in its
implications towards both God and man. And then, and perhaps we need
not say any more about it, we know that it is not true. It did not even
originate in the Bible, it did not even originate among the Jews: it is
nothing in the world but a pagan myth imported into Jewish tradition
just a few hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is of no more
authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason or
Hercules, not one particle.

Let us now turn, then, to what we know, from the history of man and the
scientific study of the universe, to be something approaching the
reality of things. People have always been talking about the origin of
evil. It is not the origin of evil that we have to face or deal with or
explain at all. Let me ask you to consider for a moment the condition
of the world when man first appeared on this planet. Here among the
lower animals were what? All the vices and all the crimes that we can
conceive of, only they were not vices nor crimes at all. There were all
the external actions and all the internal feelings and passions; but
they were not vices, and they were not crimes. Why? Because there was
no moral sense which recognized anything better, no moral standard in
the light of which they might be judged.

Here, for example, in this lower world, were all hatreds, jealousies,
envies, cruelties, thefts, greeds, murders, every kind of action that
we speak of as evil in man. And yet I said there was no evil there, no
moral evil there, because there was no consciousness, no recognition,
of the distinction between the lower and the higher. This was a part of
the natural and intended order of the development of life, not an
accident, not an invasion from the outside, not a thwarting of the will
of God, not an interference with his purpose, all of this a part of the
working out of his purpose.

Now, when man appeared, what happened? The origin, not of evil, but the
origin of goodness. A conscience was born. Man came into possession of
a moral ideal, in the light of which he recognized something higher
than this animalism that was all around him, and became conscious of
the fact that he must battle against that, and put it under his feet.
So that the life of the world, from that day to this, has been the
growth, th