Evil has no existence per se and is but the absence of good
and exists but for him who is made its victim.
It proceeds from two causes,
and no more than good is it an independent cause in nature.
Nature is destitute of goodness or malice;
she follows only immutable laws when she either gives life and joy,
or sends suffering and death, and destroys what she has created.
Nature has an antidote for every poison
and her laws a reward for every suffering.
The butterfly devoured by a bird becomes that bird,
and the little bird killed by an animal goes into a higher form.
It is the blind law of necessity
and the eternal fitness of things and hence cannot be called Evil in Nature.
The real evil proceeds from human intelligence
and its origin rests entirely with reasoning man,
who dissociates himself from Nature.
Humanity, then, alone is the true source of evil.
Evil is the exaggeration of good,
the progeny of human selfishness and greediness.
Think profoundly and you will find that apart from death –
which is no evil but a necessary law,
and accidents, which will always find their reward in a future life –
the origin of every evil whether small or great is in human action,
in man whose intelligence makes him the one free agent in Nature.
Food, sexual relations, drink are all natural necessities of life;
yet excess in them brings on disease, misery, suffering,
– mental and physical,
the latter being transmitted as the greatest evils to future generations,
the progeny of the culprits.
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