188 TheSpiritual Life.
existence, imperfectionmustcomeintoexistence
at thesametime. Thefact of manifestationis
theoriginofimperfection.
But when we go on to deal with what is
called evil, we find something more m our
thoughts than this necessary imperfection of
separatedbodies; although theessence ofim-
perfection is in the veryexistence of the uni-verse,thatwhichwecall evil liesinthedegree
of imperfection,and in itsrelation to the rest.
But inthe verywords"good and evil"rela-
tivity is fundamentally implied, the "pairs ofopposites" necessary to thought; the word
"good"is not fairly to be predicated of any
thinguntil the idea of evil is recognised-the
"not-good;" forgood andevilarecorrelative
terms,andtheonecan onlybedistinguishedas
being the opposite of the other which is im-
plicitlypresent in the mind at the same time.
It isa fundamental lawof mmd thatthought
must work by difference, discriminating the
difference, technically, between "A" and
"not-A"; "A" representing the individual
thingwhichisthoughtof,and"not-A"every-
thingelsewhichisexcludedfromthatindividual
thing, so that if you say"good"youseparate
thegoodfromthatfromwhichitisdistinguished,
- the"not-good": andwithoutthisseparation