If we turn from the general principles to their application in detail, we find a separate proof for the inevitableness or salutary nature of each of the three kinds of evil—­the metaphysical evil of created existence, the physical evil of suffering (and punishment), and the moral evil of sin.  Metaphysical evil is absolutely unavoidable, if a world is to exist at all; created beings without imperfection, finiteness, limitation, are entirely inconceivable—­something besides gods must exist.  The physical evil of misery finds its justification in that it makes for good.  First of all, the amount of suffering is not so great as it appears to discontented spirits to be.  Life is usually quite tolerable, and vouchsafes more joy and pleasure than grief and hardship; in balancing the good and the evil we must especially remember to reckon on the positive side the goods of activity, of health, and all that which affords us, perchance, no perceptible pleasure, but the removal of which would be felt as an evil (Theodicy, ii.  Sec. 251).  Most evils serve to secure us a much greater good, or to ward off a still greater evil.  Would a brave general, if given the choice of leaving the battle unwounded, but also without the victory, or of winning the victory at the cost of a wound, hesitate an instant to choose the latter?  Other troubles, again, must be regarded as punishment for sins and as means of reformation; the man who is resigned to God’s will may be certain that the sufferings which come to him will turn out for his good.

Especially if we consider the world as a whole, it is evident that the sum of evil vanishes before the sum of good.  It is wrong to look upon the happiness of man as the end of the world.  Certainly God had the happiness of rational beings in mind, but not this exclusively, for they form only a part of the world, even if it be the highest part.  God’s purpose has reference rather to the perfection of the whole system of the universe.  Now the harmony of the universe requires that all possible grades of reality be represented, that there should be indistinct ideas, sense, and corporeality, not merely a realm of spirits, and with these, conditions of imperfection, feelings of pain, and theoretical and moral errors are inevitably given.  The connection and the order of the world demands a material element in the monad, but happiness without alloy can never be the lot of a spirit joined to a body.  Thirdly, in regard to moral evil also we receive the assurance that the sum of the bad is much less than that of the good.  Then, moral evil is connected with metaphysical evil:  created beings cannot be absolutely perfect, hence, also, not morally perfect or sinless.  But, in return for this, there is no being that is absolutely imperfect, none only and entirely evil.  With this is joined the well-known principle of the earlier thinkers, that evil is nothing actual, but merely deprivation, absence of good, lack of clear