There is, however, another sense in which we may say that an earlier stage lives on in later ones; namely, that it has helped to make these what they are, that they are bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. In this second sense we may declare that a man's life is a whole in which each moment bodies forth all of it that has gone before. Through memory a part of what I have been lives on in me, but in the fact of which we are now speaking the past is preserved more completely and in a more significant sense. This second fact also would doubtless be admitted by most of those who say that the past is non-existent. Few, if any, of those who make this assertion mean it in the bald sense in which it is opposed to the recognition of any continuity of character and conduct.
But when we have said that an earlier stage continues to live in a later one in the sense that it has helped to give this later its character, we have not gone very far toward explaining the compensatory function of the later stages. For it is comparatively seldom that we can say that the later good exists because of the earlier evil or the later evil because of the earlier good.[1] In most cases it seems that we must rather say that the evil replaces the good and that the good replaces the evil; that the later good exists in spite of, not because of, the earlier evil, and similarly the later evil in spite of the earlier good. Now in such cases it does not seem possible to explain the compensatory function of the later by an appeal to the influence of the earlier. At the same time I believe it to be true that the later stage has its compensatory power because it is what the earlier has
- ↑ The instances that are most commonly given in support of the assertion that evil leads to good are the spiritual enrichment that sometimes seems to result from suffering and the strengthening of moral fiber that comes from the conflict with obstacles of various kinds. Much has been said of the ennobling effect of the conflict with pain and difficulty; and I am far from wishing to deny the deep truth involved in the contention, although it seems to me that in our emphasis upon it we sometimes overlook the fact that in a large number of instances the effect is apparently the reverse of ennobling. Be this as it may, the point that I wish to make is that when a man's nature is refined by suffering or strengthened by the struggle against heavy odds it is not quite accurate to say that good has come out of an earlier evil. For the increase in moral strength, e.g., which shows itself at a later period, came not from the obstacle (the evil), but from the heroic battling against it; and this was not an evil but a good.
