Nothing matters. Everything is at once good and evil,
beautiful and hideous, true and false. Or rather nothing is
beautiful, nothing is true. The "parent of the universe" has satisfied
his absolute "goodness" by swallowing up the universe; and there
is nothing left for the miserable company of mortal souls to do but
to bow their resigned heads and cry "Om! Om!" out of the belly of
that unutterable "universal," which by becoming "everything" has
become nothing.

This conception of a universal being of "absolute goodness" looms
like a colossal corpse in front of all living movement. If instead of
"absolute goodness" we say "absolute love," the falseness and
deadliness of this conception appears even more unmistakable. For
love is the prerogative of personality alone. Apart from
personality we cannot conceive of love. And we cannot conceive of
personality without the struggle between love and malice.
"Absolute love" is a contradiction in terms; for it is the nature of
love to be perpetually overcoming malignant opposition; and, in
this overcoming, to be perpetually approximating to a far-off ideal
which can never be completely reached.

Devils and demons, or elemental entities of unredeemed evil, are
unreal enough; and in their unreality dangerous enough to the
creative spirit; but far more unreal and far more dangerous than
any devil, is this conception of an absolute being whose
"goodness" is of so spurious a nature that it obliterates all
distinction. This conception of "a parent of the universe" who is
responsible for the "eternal duality," but in whom the "eternal
duality" is reconciled, blots out all hope for mortal or immortal
souls. Between the soul of a man and the soul of an immortal god,
as for instance between the soul of a man and the soul of Christ,
there may be passionate and enduring love. But between the soul
of a man, in whom love is desperately struggling with malice, and
this monstrous being in whom love and malice have arrived at
some unthinkable reconciliation, there can be no love. There can
be nothing but indignant unbelief alternating with profound
aversion. Towards any being in whose nature love has been
reconciled to malice, the true to the false, the beautiful to the
hideous, the good to the evil, there can be no alternative to
unbelief, except unmitigated hostility.

It is especially in connection with the atrocious cruelty of physical
pain that our conscience and our tastes--unless perve