ABSTRACT
evil irredeemable and really ‘desperate’ is the ‘metaphysical evil’, for in all other evils, since they are only partial, there springs up perpetually the hope of change. But this is a universal evil, a sense of hopeless shortcoming, Weltschmerz, the misery of the world itself, which strikes at the root, not the leaves or flowers, which disposes and impels to melancholy and to suicide. I am speaking of those who are in earnest with it, certainly not of academic or literary persons who dilate in their arm-chairs on the irrationality of the real, nor of the fashionable folk who talk so lightly of ‘this mad world’, and fear it so little that they can speak with a smile on their lips. But for a universal evil there is a universal remedy, and metaphysical evil is cured by thought. Thought analyses the unity of the real into its opposing aspects, without losing sight of the unity, and thus it weaves its web and performs its miracle of reproducing the harmony of things in its own harmony; thus it restores a wholesome world to those who in the tumult of passion or in unrequited love had felt it as infected with vileness; thus it restores an ever youthful world to those who in a frightful dream have seen it rushing to destruction. From time to time we call upon this healing minister, which restores us to our life’s work calmed and comforted, and there rises from the depths of our hearts a kind of gratitude, a thankful impulse, like that which rises from religious souls to God. Or is it the very same impulse? Thought is in us and in the ruling part of us, and God is only in us and is the source of all our strength. Do we then thank God as men thank one another in the world, in order to repay benefits with praise and to encourage their continuance? That is not a kind of thanks very 220pleasant either to give or to receive for gentle natures who know that the right return for kindness is intelligent appreciation and rivalry in well-doing. ‘Thanks be to God’ is a metaphorical expression of the poets that symbolises our recognition of a power above all others which we can only reverence by exercising it ourselves.
