PART I-THE ENEMY.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

What was the origin of evil?

Materialists

would give one answer, students of mythology a second and theologians a third:

(a) The Materialists' answer would be that originally there was nothing, except atoms of matter at a distance from each other absolutely still and absolutely cold. There were no governing principles or natural laws, only a TENDENCY TO EXIST. Age followed age and a hardly perceptible movement began among some of the atoms. This was the beginning of consolidation and temperature, which from the materialists' point of view was an IMPROVEMENT. So the first "tendency to exist" now became divided into two

tendencies, the TENDENCY ΤΟ EXIST UNIMPROVED, and THE TENDENCY TO IMPROVE.

These two tendencies or wills have been opposing each other ever since and were born into all nature. Man, they say, developed by steps and stages from the earliest combination of atoms, opposed at every stage by that portion of the universe, (or by that tendency to exist unimproved at all times animating toward him that portion of the universe), less advanced than himself. Thus the tendency to exist unimproved manifests itself, by animating in lower life a hatred for the higher, and materialists have a theory that material germs, or low forms of life, flying through the air and entering the body of man, cause all diseases. Again, whether it be poison of the body or of the mind, it is this tendency, fighting man in the one case by lower forms of matter, in the other by suggestions of lower life. Sin, they say, is yielding to the spirit of unimprovement.

When at last man was born, he became conscious of the struggle between these two tendencies, and alternately falling into the

power of the one, and being inspired by the pure idealism of the other, he has progressed, it is true, but stumblingly and haltingly, with the horde of tendencies just behind him, always more and more powerful to pull him back into the abyss. Every stage of development left behind represents a separate tendency doing its best to draw us back to that stage. So as man progressed more and more he had more and more tendencies (the materialists' devils) to contend with.

The logical conclusion would be that the IDEAL is man's guardian angel and beastliness his devil. But we can not expect people calling themselves materialists to use other than material terms.

(b) Students of mythology give a hundred fanciful personal names to the tendencies of both kinds. One kind were "gods" and the other kind demons or dragons. Both kinds were given offerings, the gods in order that they would befriend in time of need, and the dragons so that they would not devour the whole of the people. The offering to the dragon was very usually a maiden, some

times chained to a rock like Andromeda. It may be that the form of the dragon was suggested by some survival of pterodactyl or dinosaurus, but in any event it was the ancient type, the power of a past stage of development. On the other hand the "gods" were ideals. They were personifications of qualities, such as wisdom, swiftness, power, beauty, etc. Here again we have the eternal struggle between the bestial and the ideal, between the tendency of the dragon to exist and the tendency of man to rise.

These gods were not all-powerful nor were they the authors of evil. They usually caused good to come out of evil, but that was only in the sense of "making the best of a bad job." Progress as represented by the mythological gods, made good come out of evil by using evil as a brake, so that all phases of development should keep pace with each other and not one outrun the "team." "Forward, but not too fast," seems to have been its motto. The separate power of evil was known and recognized and no one denied its existence.