On the debit side of the account the absolute, taken seriously, and not as a mere name for our right occasionally to drop the strenuous mood and take a moral holiday, introduces all those tremendous irrationalities into the universe which a frankly pluralistic theism escapes, but which have been flung as a reproach at every form of monistic theism or pantheism.  It introduces a speculative ’problem of evil’ namely, and leaves us wondering why the perfection of the absolute should require just such particular hideous forms of life as darken the day for our human imaginations.  If they were forced on it by something alien, and to ‘overcome’ them the absolute had still to keep hold of them, we could understand its feeling of triumph, though we, so far as we were ourselves among the elements overcome, could acquiesce but sullenly in the resultant situation, and would never just have chosen it as the most rational one conceivable.  But the absolute is represented as a being without environment, upon which nothing alien can be forced, and which has spontaneously chosen from within to give itself the spectacle of all that evil rather than a spectacle with less evil in it.[9] Its perfection is represented as the source of things, and yet the first effect of that perfection is the tremendous imperfection of all finite experience.  In whatever sense the word ‘rationality’ may be taken, it is vain to contend that the impression made on our finite minds by such a way of representing things is altogether rational.  Theologians have felt its irrationality acutely, and the ‘fall,’ the predestination, and the election which the situation involves have given them more trouble than anything else in their attempt to pantheize Christianity.  The whole business remains a puzzle, both intellectually and morally.

Grant that the spectacle or world-romance offered to itself by the absolute is in the absolute’s eyes perfect.  Why would not the world be more perfect by having the affair remain in just those terms, and by not having any finite spectators to come in and add to what was perfect already their innumerable imperfect manners of seeing the same spectacle?  Suppose the entire universe to consist of one superb copy of a book, fit for the ideal reader.  Is that universe improved or deteriorated by having myriads of garbled and misprinted separate leaves and chapters also created, giving false impressions of the book to whoever looks at them?  To say the least, the balance of rationality is not obviously in favor of such added mutilations.  So this question becomes urgent:  Why, the absolute’s own total vision of things being so rational, was it necessary to comminute it into all these coexisting inferior fragmentary visions?