Evil nature

“ Grant it; but why should good things in nature be used as types of evil things in the mind? If the thorn and the brier be good and a part of the original and beautiful order of creation, with what propriety can they be taken as emblems of what is evil and disorderly in the mind of man? ”

“ This is the mode in which the human heart has become perverted; here is the genuine source of moral evil; the hot-bed of that epidemical depravity, the cause of that hereditary corruption, the fountain of that inveterate delinquency, which pervaded the earth; rendering the abundance of nature nothing better than a curse; blasting the fairest prospects of humanity; degrading man below the beast of the forest; sinking his intellectual faculties in the most savage barbarity ”

“ For we have had meantime to allow that millennial dreams of a liberation of Nature from the thraldom of so-called physical evil are as fanciful as the legends of this subjection as a consequence of moral evil. ”

“ Thus evil, in fact, is a perversion of the mental faculties—distortion, so to speak, of the spiritual substances and forms, which constitute the mind. These ugly and fierce mental existences flowing forth into nature, and putting on correspondent material forms, presented to view those noxious and hateful things, animal and vegetable, and mineral also, which astonish and shock us, when beheld in the midst of God's beautiful creation. ”

“ Of evil beings and hell.Still more, a thousand facts of our life teach us that we are exposed to influences of an evil nature as well as to those that are good. How often, in our dreams, does it happen that we are terror-stricken by the approach of hideous forms, faces of fearful [289] appearance, from which we vainly struggle to escape. Is it not natural for us to attribute the evil we see in the world to these as the good to those? and, since we can not conceive of the existence of beings without assigning them a place, where shall we find for these malignant spirits a habitation? ”

“ Section XXIII But, neither are the demons evil by nature; for, if they are evil by nature, neither are they from the Good, nor amongst things existing; nor, in fact, did they change from good, being by nature, and always, evil. Then, are they evil to themselves or to others? If to themselves, they also destroy themselves; but if to others, how destroying, or what destroying?----Essence, or power, or energy? If indeed Essence, in the first place, it is not contrary to nature; for they do not destroy things indestructible by nature, but things receptive of destruction. ”

“ Thee knows it is so. Human nature is like the earth: the deeper the plough goes into the soil unploughed before, the more evil substance is turned up—evil that becomes alive as soon as the sun and the air fall upon it. ”

“ This evil, so feebly counteracted by the powers of good, allures and fascinates me above all things. For a long time past, my life-work has been to ascertain its true nature, and trace it to its fountain-head. I am sure that somewhere in space there is the center from which all evil emanates. ”

“ The cultivation of what in us is lonely and unique creates of necessity a perpetual series of shocks and jars. The unruffled nerves of the lower animals become enviable, and we fall into moods of malicious reaction and vindictive recoil. And yet,—for Nature makes use even of what is named evil to pursue her cherished ends—the very betrayal of our outraged feelings produces no unpleasant effect upon the minds of others. ”

“ Through the brief space of this existence, where the encountering of millions of free intelligences within the fixed conditions of nature causes a seeming medley of good and evil, of discord and harmony, wickedness often triumphs, villany often outreaches and tramples ingenuous nobility and helpless innocence. Some saintly spirits, victims of disease and penury, drag out their years in agony, neglect, and tears. Some bold minions of selfishness, with seared consciences and nerves of iron, pluck the coveted fruits of pleasure, wear the diadems of society, and sweep through the world in pomp. ”

“ Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice There or any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other but all true to the settled plan, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth, designated as ‘the Mortal Kind and this Place’? ”

“ So life was not as I had been taught—a painful struggle between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but rather through joyous expression of the animal lay advancement. ”

“ "Know'st thou not all germs of evil In thy heart await their time? Not thyself, but God's restraining, Stays their growth of crime. ”

“ Therefore everything that is disagreeable and horrible in this life, everything that can afflict and terrify our senses, all the kinds of natural and moral evil, are only so much of the nature, effects and manifestation of hell, for hell and evil are only two words for one and the same thing. ”

“ Now, how can that race of evil of yours, which you make the supreme evil, be against nature, that is, against substance, when it, according to you, is itself a nature and substance? For if it acts against itself, it destroys its own existence ”

“ It is true, we now use it only in an evil sense, to express a belief in the agency of invisible, capricious, malignant powers, which fills the mind with fear and terror, and sees in every unexplained phenomenon of nature an omen, or prognostic, of some future evil. ”

“ But there are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy. ”

“ The spirits of evil in whom they believed were localized in the objects of nature and to their presence all natural phenomena were due. Nature was therefore lawless and hostile. But these demons have all been cast out by the presence and power of God in nature. ”

“ Now, who will dare assert that man's natural impulse to wreak just vengeance is essentially evil? Nothing in Nature is essentially evil. The methods suggested by passion or an exasperating paralysis of justice may be unlawful, but the impulse that gave rise to the movement is natural and as such is good. ”

“ That the good Creator could not have been the originator of these destructive, evil, and abominable things in nature, such as furious and corpse-eating hyænas, filthy vermin, and devastating locusts, in the animal kingdom, nor of the useless and poisonous things in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms,—may be concluded on the same ground as that He could not have been the author of moral evil,—namely, that it implies a contradiction. ”

“ I own that I can perceive in Nature no moral order, that in her world there is no knowledge of us or of our ideals, and that in general her order often breaks upon man's life with mere ruin, irrational and pitiful; and I acknowledge, also, the prominence of evil in the social, and its invasion in the individual, life of man. ”

“ She attributes the extraordinary phenomena of Nature to the work of good or evil spirits and believes in placating them or controlling them as far as possible. These evil spirits are liable to lurk in all places, in the ovens, the wells, and even in the market basket, which is covered to protect it from the evil eye of covetous passers-by, or to guard it from a wandering spirit who may be seeking a place of retreat. ”

“ The moment we have broken through an obstruction, not accidentally, but by the aid of faith, we begin to interpret the Universe, and to apprehend why evil is permitted. Evil is obstruction; Good is accomplishment.
'It would seem that the Divine Being designs through man to express distinctly what the other forms of nature only intimate, and that wherever man remains imbedded in nature, whether from sensuality, or because he is not yet awakened to consciousness, the purpose of the whole remains unfulfilled. Hence our displeasure when Man is not in a sense above Nature. ”

“ These dispositions enable us to account for the formation of tutelary gods, of lares, of larvae, which every man makes to himself in savage and unpolished nations. Thus we perceive that weak superstitious mortals, ignorant of truth, devoid of experience, regard as the arbiters of their fate, as the dispensers of good and evil, animals, stones, unformed inanimate substances, which the effort of their heated imaginations transform into gods, whom they invest with intelligence, whom they clothe with desires, to whom they give volition. ”

“ Bs we survey the course of this wonderful evolution, it begins to become manifest that moral evil is simply the characteristic of the lower state of living as looked at from the higher state. Its existence is purely relative, yet it is profoundly real, and in a process of perpetual spiritual evolution its presence in some hideous form throughout a long series of upward stages is indispensable. ”

“ "But, by all thy nature's weakness, Hidden faults and follies known, Be thou, in rebuking evil, Conscious of thine own. ”

“ Spirits of evil, but not of good, therefore require to be propitiated. The powers of nature—thunder, lightning and storm, all supposed to be caused by evil and angry spirits — are held in the greatest dread. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BOOK I God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another's fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master's taste like the trees in his garden. ”

“ This subtle adaptation of the symbol of external pain to the representation of the moral struggle, wherein the hostile power may assume deceptive forms of beauty and pleasure, is only one impressive illustration of the transfer of human conceptions of evil from outward to inward [6] nature. ”

“ Nor, again, do they involve that monstrous paradox of all ascetic systems, that human nature is radically evil and that only that is good in us which contradicts our natural appetites and instincts. Evil and sin are recognized, just as fevers and serpents are recognized ”

“ In truth, none seem to have any title to assert human nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own minds afford them one instance of this natural depravity; ”

“ "The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting," thought he, "but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and--whether one has fallen or resisted--one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and aesthetic feeling and demands our worship--then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. ”

“ The truest definition of evil is that which represents it as something contrary to nature: evil is evil, because it is unnatural; a vine which should bear olive berries, an eye to which blue seems yellow, would be diseased: an unnatural mother, an unnatural son, an unnatural act, are the strongest terms of condemnation. ”

“ You produce a bunch of gassy bounders who—since hellishness is everywhere but since they've discarded hell—confuse the goodness of the species with goods, good health, prosperity, long life—things that may be possible devils for the species. They lose sight of the inwardness of the nongood and see evil as a material fact, entirely. ”

“ Every action that helps a being manifest its divine nature more and more is good, every action that retards it is evil. ”

“ I carry in my heart countless cities and illimitable deserts. And evil — evil and death — spread over this immensity, cover them all, as night covers the earth. I am, in myself alone, a universe of evil thoughts. ”

“ IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of evil,—the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and suffering and discord,—the wrong which all men see in others and feel in themselves,—the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery. ”

“ It found heaven filled with a horde of gods, monstrous, impure, and horrible, gigantic embodiments of brute force and lust, or at best cold abstractions of cosmical principles, whom men could fear, but not love, honour, or revere. It found man in a world dark and unhomelike, bowing down in abject worship to beasts and birds, and stocks and stones, trembling with craven cowardice before the elements and forces of Nature, enslaved in a degrading bondage of physical superstition, fetishism, and polytheism. ”

“ This evil thing winds through all the inlets of the senses, moulds itself in forms, blends with colors, weds with sounds, lurks in anger and guileful speech, clothes itself in scents, transfuses itself in savors, and by a flood of troublous movement obscures the mind with evil desires, and fills with vapor the channels of the understanding, through which the soul's ray might shed the light of reason. ”

“ Whether a human being could be reached by this subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, “cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field,”—a relation which some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so instinctive that this animal has been for that reason adopted as the natural symbol of evil. ”