Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

“ Another Protestant authority says:
"The tree of knowledge of good and evil revealed to those who ate its fruit secrets of which they had better have remained ignorant; for the purity of man's happiness consisted in doing and loving good without even knowing evil." ”

“ And, while the helpless subject of this great moral art is every moment requiring our aid,—with an understanding that may rise, from truth to truth, to the sublimest discoveries, or may remain sunk forever in ignorance, and with susceptibilities of vice that may be repressed, and of virtue that may be cherished,—can we know too well the means of checking what is evil, and of fostering what is good? ”

“ God never said that man would become better by learning to distinguish evil from good,—but the contrary, that by this knowledge, by man's first disobedience, came “death into the world, and all our woe.” ”

“ We appeal to the moral experience to illustrate how, when we do good, the evil will is present as a real fact in us, which yet does not make us as a whole bad, but just because it is present as an overcome element, is, even for that very reason, necessary to make us good. ”

“ In order to find out the true origin of moral evil, it will be necessary, in the first place, to enquire into its nature and essence; or, what it is that constitutes one action evil, and another good. ”

“ Might the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as my delight in external beauty, for in a deep sense of moral evil, more perhaps than in anything else, abides a saving knowledge of God! It is not so much to admire moral good; that we may do, and yet not be ourselves conformed to it; but if we really do abhor that which is evil, not the persons in whom evil resides, but the evil which dwelleth in them, and much more manifestly and certainly to our own knowledge, in our own hearts—this is to have the feeling of God and of Christ, and to have our Spirit in sympathy with the Spirit of God. ”

“ But, together with the law of sin, the root of evil in the world, and the false goodness in it, it announces a fount of true natures; it tells us of a breath of Heaven of which we know not whence it cometh and whither it goeth; which inspires single individual hearts, that spring up here and there, and everywhere, like broken gleams of the supreme goodness. And it recognizes in the renewed heart of man an instinct which can discern true goodness and distinguish it from false; a secret discrimination in the good by which they know the good. ”

“ Which one of our faculties then can inform us of the nature of evil? This question is not easy to solve, because there must be an analogy between the knower and the known.157 The Intelligence and the Soul may indeed cognize forms and fix their desires on them, because they themselves are forms; but evil, which consists in the absence of all goods, could not be described as a form.158 But inasmuch as there can be but one single science, to embrace even contraries, and as the evil is the contrary of the good, knowledge of the good implies that of evil. ”

“ Now of this evil impulse I do not say, looking at it objectively: “It is somehow a part of the universal good;” but, in the moment of moral action I make it, even in the very moment of its sinfulness, a part of my good consciousness, in overcoming it. The moral insight condemns the evil that it experiences; and in condemning and conquering this evil it forms and is, together with the evil, the organic total that constitutes the good will. Only through this inner victory over the evil that is experienced as a conquered tendency does the good will have its being. ”

“ Some desire to do good all the time, still it seems that almost every act they perform results in evil; look upon such persons as they are, through eyes of mercy, and not measure them with your measure. If you are endowed with wisdom and understand-ing, if you escape the evil and do the good, thank God that you have knowledge, and do not condemn your brethren and sisters who are weaker than you are for falling into evil when they know no better. ”

“ Yet, at times, every man, who has any degree of spirituality whatever, or even any knowledge of religious truth, by the light of which he may be able to distinguish evil from good—feels that he is evil, that he has terrible evils within himself. ”

“ You discard me and my devotion, to follow a nature, in its way, it is true, greater even than my own, representing the principle of good, as I represent the principle of evil, but one to which yours is utterly abhorrent. ”

“ We distinguish truth from error, moral good and evil; we fear punishment on having committed evil, and hope for reward on having done well. And, through the grace of God assisting us, we have a power to embrace and resolve to do good, as well as evil. ”

“ And for some, it is against their will to understand to do good, by reason of the deviation or weakness of the will. And in short, the Evil (as we have often said) is want of strength and want of power, and defect, either of the knowledge, or the never to be forgotten knowledge, or of the faith, or of the aspiration, or of the energy of the Good. ”

“ And I say—that allowing the most powerful effects to spring from the first grounds of a moral system;—the worst or the best,—that mine, if the best is to be so judged by the good it does and the evil it prevents, must be ranked among the best. ”

“ He is born to love the good, and to hate the evil, but he has no real knowledge of what is good and what is evil; what intuitions he has, he puts no faith in, but yields himself in simplicity to the steering of others. ”

“ And, if they say that matter is necessary, for a completion of the whole Cosmos, how is matter an evil? For the Evil is one thing, and the necessary [11] is another. But, how does He, Who is Good, bring anything to birth from the Evil? or, how is that, which needs the Good, evil? ”

“ That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all—even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. ”

“ And the beginning of the way which leads to this glorious realization is the acquirement of a right understanding of the nature of evil.
It is not sufficient to deny or ignore evil; it must be understood. It is not enough to pray to God to remove the evil; you must find out why it is there, and what lesson it has for you. ”

“ And we are thus anxious to persuade them of the rewards of right living, when we see that many things which we teach about a healthy moral life are also taught by the enemies of our faith. For you will find that they have not entirely lost the common notions of right and wrong, of good and evil. ”

“ The great difference that there is between the characters of the righteous and the wicked, which, in several instances, are set the one over-against the other, to show that, though all things come alike to all, yet that does not in the least confound the eternal distinction between moral good and evil, but that remains immutable. ”

“ Can the people understand that it is {102} actually necessary for opposite principles to be placed before them, or this state of being would be no probation, and we should have no opportunity for exercising the agency given us? Can they understand that we cannot obtain eternal life unless we actually know and comprehend by our experience the principle of good and the principle of evil, the light and the darkness, truth, virtue, and holiness,—also vice, wickedness, and corruption? ”

“ My good act is good just because of the evil that exists in it as conquered element. Without the evil moment actual in it, the total act could be at best innocent, not good. It is good by reason of its structure. That structure includes the evil all, but so includes it that the whole act is good. ”

“ In him thy evil impulse forms part of a total good will, as the evil impulse of the good man forms an element in his realization of goodness. In God thy separateness is destroyed, and with it thy sin as evil. For good will in the infinite is what the good man finds the good will to be in himself, namely, the organic total whose truth is the discovery of the evil. ”

“ I watch very closely, and if I hear a word, see a look, or a sneer at divine things or anything derogatory to a good moral character, I feel it in a moment, and I say, "If you follow that it will not lead to good, it is evil; it will not lead to the fountain of life and intelligence ”

“ It is necessary also for him to learn, by actual experience, the difference between good and evil. As was said of our first parents, "And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." ”

“ That a whole which includes a cognition of something evil or ugly may yet be a great positive good on the whole: most virtues, which have any intrinsic value whatever, seem to be of this kind, e.g. (a) courage and compassion, and (b) moral goodness; all these are instances of the hatred or contempt of what is evil or ugly; 216 132.
but there seems no reason to think that, where the evil object exists, the total state of things is ever positively good on the whole, although the existence of the evil may add to its value as a whole. ”

“ But goodness, by the hypothesis that we are just now considering, requires that evil should be wholly abolished. How can that which should not exist at all, namely, evil, be in such wise the expression of the real nature of things that on the one hand religion is needed to save us from evil, and yet is able to do so only by bringing us to know that the real nature of things is good? Here is our problem. ”

“ Well, now, to acquire this, what is the labor before us? What is neces-sary? That we turn from evil. Well, how shall we know evil? Why our evils are pointed out continually, not only by the feeble dawnings of light within us, but by the light of that inspiration that burns in the hearts of the servants of God, making their comprehensions of truth reach incomparably beyond those who have not in such a way devoted themselves to the acquirement of knowledge. ”

“ But with regard to the only evil that we know as an inward experience, and so as a certain reality, namely, the Evil Will, we know both the existence of that, and its true relation to universal goodness, because and only because we experience both of them first through the moral insight, and then in the good act. Goodness having its very life in the insight and in its exercise, has as its elements the evil impulse and its correction. The evil will as such may either be conquered in our personal experience, and then we are ourselves good ”

“ But by far the most serious consideration yet remains. If, according to Monistic teaching men are but bubbles on the surface of reality, and are inevitably carried as it wills,—there is an end of all distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, merit and guilt. ”

“ All men are essentially divine, though unaware of their divine nature, and all their acts are efforts, even though many of them are dark and impotent, to realize some higher good. All so-called evil is seen to be rooted in ignorance, even those deeds that are called deliberately wicked, so that condemnation ceases, and Love and Compassion become all in all. ”

“ The follies and the vices, the weariness and the sadness, the discontent and the moroseness of life, all spring from the want of a just conception of its relations and its value, such as can be attained only by calm, deliberate reflection, out of which wise opinions evolve, and are gradually shaped into a creed such as forms the bone and muscle of a wise and noble Character.
Evil is ever the result of the abuse of some good; for nothing was created evil. ”

“ Such is indeed the only present word for us finite minds about many of the shadows of seeming evil that we have to behold in the world of the apparently external facts. Such however is not the last word for us about the only evil that has any immediate moral significance, namely, the evil that we see, not as an external, shadowy mist, but as a present fact, experienced in us. ”

“ He who chooses may read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil itself is an instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the history of evil as well as the history of good should be read, considered, and digested. ”

“ The external principle of evil is the demon, who tempts man to sin. The external principle of good is God, who instructs us by His law and the voice of conscience, and assists us by His grace.
(3) The Special Means Tending to the Last End.—These are our own good works; hence, here are considered the virtues incumbent on all classes of men, i.e., the theological and moral virtues. ”

“ Our present explanation of evil in the world is, we have seen, the only one that can both give us the absolute religious comfort, and save us from the terrible moral paralysis involved in destroying, for the Infinite, the distinction between good and evil. ”

“ Now in contrast with such healthy-minded views as these, if we treat them as a way of deliberately minimizing evil, stands a radically opposite view, a way of maximizing [pg 131] evil, if you please so to call it, based on the persuasion that the evil aspects of our life are of its very essence, and that the world's meaning most comes home to us when we lay them most to heart. ”

“ From the worldly point of view, therefore, virtue and sin are to be distinguished by the good and the evil character of their consequences. [118] Acts that are (apparently) evil, when undertaken from considerations connected with the gods, the scriptures, life itself, and the means by which life is sustained, produce consequences that are good. ”

“ How simple also the solution of the problem of evil! “If I want to do evil, I cannot,” said the objector; “for God the perfect one includes me with the rest, and so cannot in his perfection be hurt by me. Let me do what I will, my act can only seem bad, and cannot be bad. All evil is illusion, hence there is no moral difference in action possible.” ”