The Significations of the Term “Evil”
1. That which causes or increases harm, injury, misfortune, or disease.
2. Such advice as is misleading, mischievous, or disastrous.
3. Any wish whose fulfilment would lead to calamity, trouble, or death.
4. Any abusive, malicious, or slanderous statement, (compare “evil tongue”).
5. Any period of time characterized by misfortune or suffering.
6. The term “evil” is also used in special senses, such as in the expression “social evil” (that is, prostitution). But such a use of this word, being special and more or less provincial, should not be over-emphasized in our definition. There are, moreover, many other social evils than prostitution, and some producing far more ethical disaster.
CHAPTER V
“RIGHT” AS A GESTURAL SIGN
“From every point of view, the overwhelming and portentous character ascribed to universal conceptions is surprising. Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of the more adorable things, and that the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things.... In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic ‘idol of the tribe.’” W. James, “Principles of Psychology,” Vol. I, Chap. XII, pp. 479-80.
There had been a murder in the Maritime Provinces, and two men, a jurist and a layman, were discussing it. The murdered man, it appeared, had from time to time missed some of his sheep, and one day, upon hearing a shot fired, ran down into his pasture, and came upon two boys, one of whom was carrying a gun, and the other a bag whose contours plainly revealed that it contained the body of a sheep. The farmer ordered the boys to follow him to town to give an account of their misbehavior; and this they proceeded to do without any show of resistance or word of objection. But suddenly, and without any warning, the boy who carried the gun shot the farmer in the back of the head, killing him instantly. The murderer was later apprehended, and put into the county jail, awaiting trial.