ABSTRACT
There are many difficulties that at once present themselves to us when we try to think of the Universe as a completely ordered system, or even as a part of such a perfect order. It may of course be urged that the apparent Contingency, the Change, and the Evil are necessarily involved in the existence of the finite; and that the infinite whole may, nevertheless, be perfect. The conception of a perfect Cosmos has as its opposite the conception of an absolute Chaos. The fact of change has always presented a serious problem to constructive philosophers since the time of the Eleatics, if not even from an earlier date. Parmenides, at any rate, was convinced that what really exists must be supposed to exist always. The problem of evil is probably the hardest of all those that stand in the way of the conception of a perfect Cosmos.
