The Uses of “Evil”
Nevertheless, there is now among us a section of opinion which not only recognizes the internal origin of all kinds of evil, but which also believes that they are best controlled by a pacifist technique. Needless to say, the leaders of this section of opinion are the psychologists, for in their view any attempt to root out a thought or desire from the mind only results in “repressing” it. Repression in this sense is the forceful damming up of a psychological urge, which continues to pile up against the barrier until either the barrier breaks or the urge finds another way out. Psychologists do not believe that such urges can ever be wholly eliminated because they arise from an aspect of man’s being over which his conscious mind and reason have no real control. This aspect—the unconscious—is irrational nature in man, which centuries of civilization and moral discipline have made him forget or ignore. We know from ordinary, everyday experience of nature that natural forces are exceedingly difficult to check; they can only be redirected. You cannot simply remove the River Amazon, and if you dam it the pressure of water against the dam will constantly increase until the dam breaks or the river overflows its banks—unless you provide an outlet. This is true of almost every little stream as well as of great waterways. In the same way, everyone who has a garden knows that if you want a hedge to grow more vigorously, you must cut it back. Of course, if you tear it up by the roots it will certainly stop growing, but the human soul is not quite like a flower bed in that respect.
We cannot exterminate our own evils any more than the earth can throw out its weeds. But weeds have not choked all those parts of the earth where nature has been left to her own devices; it is only when man interferes with nature that he begins to notice the inconvenient persistence of certain lowly plants to which he gives the name of “weeds.” Yet even the best-regulated gardens have to have their soil filled with manure and other “unpleasant” fertilizers, and what is true of the soil is also true of the human mind. Where the roses of virtue bloom in their glory there will certainly be a bed of manure; it will be kept in its place, to be sure, but it will certainly be there. This is not said in cynicism, because the “filthiness” of the soil in no way detracts from the beauty of the flower except in the imaginations of those who would like to see roses blooming in midair, whose oversensitive tastes are revolted by the realities of nature. However, the expert and enthusiastic gardener finds something almost pleasurable in manure; certainly he does not smear it all over the plants, but a soil well mixed with it he calls “good” and “rich”—not “foul” and “putrid.”
This gives us a clue to what is meant by the acceptance of evil, which was never intended to be an excuse for unbridled license. It means that what morality calls evil is a natural urge that no one need fear if it is kept in its proper place—in the ground. In other words, if you find yourself thinking that you want to murder someone, to commit adultery, to rob a bank, or to beat your wife, don’t try to force the thought away. Forcing the thought away increases its power until it demands expression in action. On the other hand, there are times when people become obsessed with such thoughts, even if they have never tried to resist them. The thought takes hold of their imaginations with an apparently autonomous and irresistible power and drives them to the deed; this is precisely what the moralist fears. Yet Berdyaev writes in his Freedom and the Spirit:1
Our attitude towards evil must be free from hatred, and has itself need to be enlightened in character.…Satan rejoices when he succeeds in inspiring us with diabolical feelings to himself. It is he who wins when his own methods are turned against himself.…A continual denunciation of evil and its agents merely encourages its growth in the world—a truth sufficiently revealed in the Gospels, but to which we remain persistently blind.
These words are significant from a philosopher of the Catholic Church. For those Christians who have really studied the New Testament know as well as psychologists that evil is not overcome by violence; but apparently those who would inculcate morality by forceful, legalistic discipline have never troubled to read St. Paul. If there is any doubt about the words of Christ, there can be no two opinions about the following passage from the Epistle to the Romans:2
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.…What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid, Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
What was St. Paul’s alternative? This is given perhaps most clearly in the Epistle to the Galatians. In his own mystical terminology it is that Christ must be born in the human soul so that the will of Christ shall supplant human will. Laws and rules will then be irrelevant because whatever the individual desires to do will be the desire of Christ. We have to discover just exactly what this means, but it will immediately be clear that as Christ means love it will involve a new attitude to evil.3
St. Michael as the Dragon
But there is an important point which is often overlooked. We described a certain attitude to evil as pacifistic, and a pacifist is often one who hates the hating of hatred—three hates instead of one!—a fact which explains the frequently violent intolerance of peace propagandists. For St. Michael is as much an integral part of the human soul as evil itself, and unless the St. Michael urge of impatience with evil and pain is accepted along with evil and pain, the acceptance is only one-sided.4 This is indeed a point on which the new psychology has to be careful lest in becoming reconciled with one devil it create another in the form of St. Michael himself. The phrase “acceptance of life” means precisely the acceptance of the whole of life, and should certainly not be understood as mere spiritual laissez faire. Thus the spiritual ideal is more than “a wise passiveness”—a partial attitude that excludes force and effort, that accepts old evils but creates a new one that is almost worse than the old because it is more subtle and complex.
The difficulty of the whole psychology of acceptance is that unless it is understood in the right way it leads into a mental labyrinth whose fine nuances take us further and further from realities. There is no doubt that the technique of relaxation or acceptance “works” where an aggressive attitude would only create further trouble. Everyone who has practiced jujutsu has had a convincing, physical demonstration of the way in which force can be overcome by yielding, by arranging things so that his opponent defeats himself by his own effort. But there are two kinds of acceptance, one which is applied to particular things and the other which is applied to life in general. In exactly the same way there are the two kinds of happiness, one which is occasioned by particular things or events, and the other by the whole of life. The first type of acceptance is a question of technique and the second of spirituality; there are specific ways to achieve the former, but the latter is strangely elusive.