spects of this very struggle which
will provide us with a new source of religious insight, and which will
thus tend to throw new light upon the meaning of all the other
sources. A thorough-going study of the problem of evil would require
of us a complete philosophy not only of religion but of reality. But
we are limiting ourselves, in these discussions, to a survey of
certain sources.

The reasons why the existence and the prominence of evil in human life
seem to all of us at some times, and to many of us at all times, a
hindrance to the acceptance of any religious solution of the problems
of life are familiar. I need then only to remind you what they are.

Without going into any subtleties regarding the definition of evil, it
is obvious that our first characteristic reaction when we meet with
what we take {216} to be an evil is an effort to get rid of it, to
shun its presence, or to remove it from existence. Pain, cold, burning
heat, disease, starvation, death, our enemies, our dangers, these are
facts that, precisely so far as we find them evil, we face with the
determination to annul altogether their evil aspect.

A characteristic result of this tendency appears in the fact that man,
who of all animals is most clearly aware of the presence of evil in
his world, is for that very reason not only an ingenious deviser of
new inventions for getting good things and for supplying his needs,
but is also the most destructive of animals. He wars with his natural
surroundings, and still more with his fellow-men, in ways that show
how the instinctive aversions upon which his estimates of evil are
founded are reinforced by the habits which he forms in his contests
with ill fortune. Man the destroyer of evil thus appears, in much of
his life, as a destroyer who is also largely moved by a love of
destruction for its own sake. This love plays a great part in the
formation of even very high levels of our social and moral
consciousness. The heroes of song and story, and often of history as
well, are fascinating partly, or chiefly, because they could kill and
did so. We love victory over ill. Killing seems to involve such a
victory. So we love killing, at least in the hero tales. The result is
often a certain inconsistency. The gods offered Achilles the choice
between a short life full of the glorious slaying of enemies and a
long life of {217} harmless obscurity. He chose the short life; and
therefore he is to be remembered forever