Evil is an inevitable
aspect which things put on when they are struggling to preserve
themselves in the same habitat, in which there is not room or matter
enough for them to prosper equally side by side. Under these
circumstances the partial success of any creature--say, the
cancer-microbe--is an evil from the point of view of those other
creatures--say, men--to whom that success is a defeat. Shelley
sometimes half perceived this inevitable tragedy. So he says of the
fair lady in the _Sensitive Plant_:
"All killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof--
In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent."
Now it is all very well to ask cancer-microbes to be reasonable, and
go feed on oak-leaves, if the oak-leaves do not object; oak-leaves
might be poison for them, and in any case cancer-microbes cannot
listen to reason; they must go on propagating where they are, unless
they are quickly and utterly exterminated. And fundamentally men are
subject to the same fatality exactly; they cannot listen to reason
unless they are reasonable; and it is unreasonable to expect that,
being animals, they should be reasonable exclusively.
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