We have seen certain schools arise which have taken advantage of the insolubility (humanly speaking) of this question to embroil all others, as if it were given to our finite intelligence to [p470] comprehend and reconcile things which are infinite. Placing over the portal of social science this sentence, God cannot desire evil, they arrive at the following series of conclusions: “Evil exists in society; then society is not organized according to the designs of God. Let us change, and change again, and change continually this organization. Let us try about, and make experiments, until we have effaced all trace of suffering from the world. By that sign we shall know that the kingdom of God has come.”
Nor is this all. These schools have been led to exclude from their social plans liberty as well as suffering, for liberty implies the possibility of error, and consequently the possibility of evil. Addressing their fellow-men, they say, “Allow us to organize you—don’t you interfere—cease to compare, to judge, to decide anything by yourselves and for yourselves. We abhor the laissez faire; but we ask you to let things alone, and to let us alone. If we succeed in conducting you to perfect happiness, the infinite goodness of God will be vindicated.”
Contradiction, inconsistency, presumption,—we ask which is most apparent in such language?
One sect among others, not very philosophical, but very noisy, promises to mankind unmixed felicity. Only deliver over to that sect the government of the human race, and in virtue of certain formulas, it makes bold to rid men of every painful sensation.
But if you do not accord a blind faith to the promises of that sect, then, bringing forward that formidable and insoluble problem which has vexed philosophy since the beginning of the world, they summon you to reconcile the existence of evil with the infinite goodness of God. Do you hesitate? they accuse you of impiety.
Fourier rings the changes on this theme till he exhausts all its combinations.
“Either God has not been able to give us a social code of attraction, of justice, of truth, and of unity; in which case He has been unjust in giving us wants without the means of satisfying them.”
“Or He has not desired to give it us; and in that case He has deliberately persecuted us by creating designedly wants which it is impossible to satisfy:”
“Or He is able, and has not desired; in which case the principle of good would rival the principle of evil, having the power to establish good, and preferring to establish evil:” [p471]