ABSTRACT
The foregoing analysis of the general nature of purpose and the character of its divine manifestation is mainly formal, although this in itself need not detract from its validity. The nature of divine purpose is most clearly to be discerned from its manifestation throughout the structure of the universe as this presents itself to modern knowledge. For just as pain is the natural accompaniment, under certain specific conditions, of conscious sensitivity, so moral evil is the inevitable, and therefore logical, correlate of moral freedom. Evil therefore, considered in its essential relation to will and personality, always consists in the deliberate choice and pursuance of what the individual clearly knows to be the lowest of the alternative courses open to him, or (in other terms) of the narrowest and poorest ideal in preference to the highest that is possible under all the existing conditions.
