Mr. Fiske's Lecture.

Mr. John Fiske addressed the first open meeting of the Religious Union last evening in Sever 11 on the subject of "The Mystery of Evil." The room was completely filled and the large number that were present had the privilege of listening to an address such as Harvard men rarely are able to hear.

The discourse, Mr. Fiske said, would be composed of fragmentary thoughts suggested by the verse in Genesis where the Serpent says to Eve: "Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good from evil." The story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, was found in the Vendedad, though the chief attribute of the Parsee Areman was that of a mischief-maker. In both accounts, there is a marked anthropomorphism. God, in jealous anger at man's divine knowledge of good and evil drives him away from the garden. It was not strange that St. Paul, the first to bring the legend into prominence, should see in it the story of the fall of man, but it is possible that something of value can be learned from the other side of the shield, namely, the idea that with the first loss of innocence came the first step in the rise of man. As will be seen, this statement does not involve a paradox.

Philosophers have said that the existence of pain and wrong is hard to reconcile with the idea of a God of love. In fact, ever since men began to seek for truth this matter has been the burden of their thought. The result has usually been that in order to defend the infinity of God's goodness they have had to admit that his power was finite. This was the position of John Stuart Mill, - the Manichaean view, though Mr. Mill did not go so far as to personify evil. The Calvinistic view is really nearer to modern thought, when it is expressed in the words, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

The great lesson of science is that of the unity of nature. No matter what we study, the conviction is inevitably - forced home to us that in all the complexity and multifariousness of the universe there is one ruling principle. As Aristotle, in one of those rare glimpses of truth which he seems to have had, said, in nature there is no interpolation. So we may believe that evil was no interpolation, no after-thought of nature, but one of its necessary functions. This can be proved, for no such thing as good can be conceived without a contrasting idea of evil. The whole stream of human consciousness is made up of a vast number of different states, and discrimination is constantly going on.

It ought to be superfluous to say that such a view of good can in no way be interpreted as a justification of evil; for the strength of this view depends entirely on the antagonistic relation of good and evil.

This antagonism is seen in the theory of natural selection which underlies evolution. In the lower species the range of functions exercised is small, and weakness in any of them is likely to result in extinction. In the more highly evolved species there is a greater number of faculties and consequently a greater variety of opportunities for the superiority of one individual over another. Therefore when we get to man we find a partial suspension of the law of natural selection, because if one man is superior in a certain respect to his fellows, so they in various other respects may be superior to him.