world is full of things which appear to us to be irrational. The Good which is here held to be (as Idea) the creative power of the world, is mingled everywhere with evil. The difficulty of reconciling evil with the supremacy of good, led the ancient idealists to qualify their idealism with an element of dualism.
They thought it necessary to assume (apart from Idea) a self-existent world of material, somewhat disguised under the name of non-being, which resists the transforming influence of the good. And in religious thought this negative has appeared under various names, such as Ahriman, Satan, Mephistopheles. But absolute Idealism recognises only one ultimate principle, and has therefore no such resource. Even evil will have to be conceived as rising out of the Divine Idea.
Some attempts to explain evil.—Various explanations have been offered. Thus it may be said that good consists in overcoming evil, and can therefore exist only in relation to it. Evil is a necessary part of the same system to which good belongs. “All partial evil, universal good.” Or it may be held necessary as an obstruction in the way of good. Or evils may be held to be means towards the production of good. Hence what is evil from the finite view-point, may be good sub specie aeterni.
Or it may be argued that good cannot be realised in a world of lifeless abstractions; it can be so only in a world of concrete and finite things, rising into self-conscious minds and wills. Then, every mind will be an idea, covering a good of its own. In such a world a conflict of goods and therefore struggle, tension, and failure will be an essential element. Therefore the realisation of the Idea will consist in a struggle towards a harmonization of individual goods under one universal Good, and this process will nevér be exhausted because the life contained in the absolute Idea is infinite; and it will be in this process of infinite reconciliation that the good is realised. Completion of the process would make
