EVIL (AS. y/i/, (loth. abils, OHC. Irbil, (ler. (AO, evil; probably connected with Cloth. afar, char, (;er. fiber, ofar, Eng. orcr, Lat.
:sum r, inrfp, hyper. Ski. upari, over). Evil may be generally defined as frustrated desire, or the cause or valises of frustrated desire. If a being had no wants, no desires, no aspirations, tor that being nothing could be an evil. His own destruction would be a matter of absolute indif ference, and all his experiences would be mere colorless events. It is often said that for science there is no evil in the universe. But this state ment presupposes that all is law and order in the universe, and that this uniformity of law in nature is what man as an intellectual being de sires. For a being that wishes to know, igno rance and all causes of ignorance are evil; and chaos world be an insuperable bar to knowledge, hence would be an evil. 'lie '-,w-abidingness of nature makes knowledge possible, hence is for an intelligent being good. But man has other de sires than curiosity to know. And whatever thwarts any of these desires is so far evil. Evil is absence of food for the hungry, lack of water for the thirsty; rebuff from the beloved for the lover; disappointment for the ambitious; death for him who is filled with a lust for life. To the person, therefore, who inquires why there is evil in the world the answer given must be: in the world there are beings possessed of desire, and not possessed of the means to satisfy desire." Usually the question has reference to moral evil. But as an evil, moral evil differs no whit from any other evil. It is an unsatisfied desire or its cause. When the evil is worn" the unsatisfied desire is for a. moral order. (Fora discussion of the question what morality and moral order are, see Ermcs.) What makes moral evil more serious than other evils is the fact that human interests are more intimately and more extensively concerned in the moral order than in anything else.
Many theological and philosophical answers have been given to the question as to the origin of evil. Thus the dualism of Zoroaster main tains that evil arises from the action of Ahriman in his ceaseless antagonism to Ormazd (see AVESTA. ZOROASTER, INIANICILEISM, GNOSTICISM). Traditional Christian theology traces human evil to the fall of Adam and Eve, which, according to the account in Genesis, was brought about by the agency of the serpent. In accordance with later Ilebrew tradition, the serpent is regarded as rep resenting Satan, the personal principle of evil in the universe. Satan differs from Ahriman in not being coordinate with the principle of good. This opens the question of the relation between Satan and God, which has furnished opportunity for many a theological controversy. Again. many philosophers and theologians give a rationalistic account of the origin of evilby saying that it is a metaphysical counterpart of good; that it is as impossible to conceive good without evil as it is to conceive an inside without an outside. Oth ers again make evil a necessary result of finitude; whatever is limited is ipso facto evil. But none of their explanations are satisfactory. for rea sons which here cannot be stated in full. The diflieulty is theological rather than scientific, i. e. it is only by reason of the assumption of an original condition of things in which 110 evil is ever potentially present that one makes it impos sible to explain how evil and 'all our woe' first came into the perfect order. A scientific expla nation of the origin is a statement of the condi tions and causes of evil. This in general is accomplished in the first part of this artiele. In detail, the problem is one that has to he handed over to the practical sciences such as ethics, economics, political theory, etc.