"Teach
What good is and what evil,—just the same,
Be feigning or be fact the teacher."B
B: Ibid.
It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.
"I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
This—there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
If—(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)—
If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,