“It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked.  Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves.”

Such is Rousseau’s answer to the objection drawn from the existence of evil.  It is a good one.  It is so good that it is impossible to find a better.  If we are determined not to outrage the human conscience by denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign good, and if there is no other principle of things than He; evil cannot be accounted for otherwise than by the rebellion of the creature.  But now, Rousseau’s answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, becomes profoundly inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva goes on to develop his theory.  Evil comes from the creature; but each individual is not the exclusive source of the evils which he does and suffers.  To attribute to each individual, not only the responsibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil germs which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition of a desperate individualism.  There is evidently among men a common property in evil; Rousseau sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to find in the organization of society and in the condition of civilization the causes of pain and of sin.  When one has come to see clearly that the source of evil is in the creature, the close mutual connection of created wills and their relations with nature present a field for long and difficult study; and Rousseau has no sooner discerned the road to truth than he wanders away into byroads in which the solution of the problem escapes him.  This problem, Gentlemen, I have the intention and desire of studying some day, if God permit, with those of you who may be willing to undertake it with me.  We shall then have to deal with an objection, or rather with a difficulty.  But this difficulty, which we cannot now dispose of, must not hinder us from stating our thesis.  In every well-conducted study, the propositions to be maintained must be laid down and supported before dealing with objections.  If it were maintained that evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary first of all to endeavor to establish the thesis, in which the existence of good would be brought forward, and would constitute the objection.  The objection would have to be answered—­Why has good appeared in the world?  And I would just say in passing, that our libraries are full of treatises upon the origin of evil, and I have never met with one upon the origin of good.  It appears therefore that reason has always admitted, by a sort of instinct, the identity of good, and of the principle of being.  Our thesis is that the principle of the universe is good.  We are going to try to demonstrate it.  Afterwards the difficulty, evil, will present itself, of which it will be necessary to seek the explanation.  This will be the natural sequel, and the necessary complement of the course of lectures which we are concluding to-day.

I pass to another difficulty, another challenge which also has been addressed to me.