oning and perfecting a good that has never been. And the
moment evil is conceived as the necessary but diminishing complement to
partial success, the sting of it is gone. Evil as a temporary and
accidental necessity is tolerable; but not so an evil which is absolutely
necessary, and which must be construed with some hypothetical divine
satisfaction.

This in no way contradicts the fact that the {250} fullest life under
present conditions involves contact with evil. Innocence must be tragic
if it is not to be weak. Jesus without the cross would possess something
of that quality of unreality which attaches to Aristotle's high-minded
man. But this does not prove that life involves evil; it proves only
that life will be narrow and complacent when it is out of touch with
things as they are. Since evil is now real, he who altogether escapes it
is ignorant and idle, taking no hand in the real work to be done. Not to
feel pain when pain abounds, not to bear some share of the burden, is
indeed cause for shame. In that remarkable allegory, "The Man Who Was
Thursday," Chesterton has most vividly presented this truth. In the last
confrontation, the real anarchist, the spokesman of Satan, accuses the
friends of order of being happy, of having been protected from suffering.
But the philosopher, who has hitherto been unable to understand the
despair to which he and his companions have been driven, repels this
slander.

'I see everything,' he cried, 'everything that there is. Why does each
thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small
thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? . . . So that
each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the
anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good
a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be {251} flung
back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may
earn the right to say to this man, "You lie!" No agonies can be too
great to buy the right to say to this accuser, "We also have suffered."

'It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon
the wheel. . . . We have descended into hell. We were complaining of
unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered
insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not
been happy.'[20]

But the charge of happiness is to be repelled as a slander only because