(and punishment), and the moral evil of sin.
Metaphysical evil is absolutely unavoidable, if a world is to exist at all;
created beings without imperfection, finiteness, limitation, are entirely
inconceivable--something besides gods must exist. The physical evil of
misery finds its justification in that it makes for good. First of all, the
amount of suffering is not so great as it appears to discontented spirits
to be. Life is usually quite tolerable, and vouchsafes more joy and
pleasure than grief and hardship; in balancing the good and the evil we
must especially remember to reckon on the positive side the goods of
activity, of health, and all that which affords us, perchance, no
perceptible pleasure, but the removal of which would be felt as an evil
(_Theodicy_, ii. Sec. 251). Most evils serve to secure us a much greater good,
or to ward off a still greater evil. Would a brave general, if given the
choice of leaving the battle unwounded, but also without the victory, or of
winning the victory at the cost of a wound, hesitate an instant to choose
the latter? Other troubles, again, must be regarded as punishment for sins
and as means of reformation; the man who is resigned to God's will may be
certain that the sufferings which come to him will turn out for his good.

Especially if we consider the world as a whole, it is evident that the
sum of evil vanishes before the sum of good. It is wrong to look upon the
happiness of man as the end of the world. Certainly God had the happiness
of rational beings in mind, but not this exclusively, for they form only
a part of the world, even if it be the highest part. God's purpose has
reference rather to the perfection of the whole system of the universe. Now
the harmony of the universe requires that all possible grades of reality
be represented, that there should be indistinct ideas, sense, and
corporeality, not merely a realm of spirits, and with these, conditions
of imperfection, feelings of pain, and theoretical and moral errors are
inevitably given. The connection and the order of the world demands a
material element in the monad, but happiness without alloy can never be the
lot of a spirit joined to a body. Thirdly, in regard to moral evil also we
receive the assurance that the sum of the bad is much less than that of the
good. Then, moral evil is connected with metaphysical evil: created beings
cannot be absolutely perfect, hence, also, not morally perfect or sinless.
But, i