All this is no doubt very well said, and we are bound to accept it as
true doctrine. Although, however, it may make resignation easier by
explaining the nature of evil, it does not touch the point of Voltaire's
outburst, which is that evil exists, and exists in shapes which it is a
mere mockery to associate with the omnipotence of a benevolent
controller of the world's forces. According to Rousseau, if we go to the
root of what he means, there is no such thing as evil, though much that
to our narrow and impatient sight has the look of it. This may be true
if we use that fatal word in an arbitrary and unreal sense, for the
avoidable, the consequent without antecedent, or antecedent without
consequent. If we consent to talk in this way, and only are careful to
define terms so that there is no doubt as to their meaning, it is hardly
deniable that evil is a mere word and not a reality, and whatever is is
indeed right and best, because no better is within our reach. Voltaire,
however, like the man of sense that he was, exclaimed that at any rate
relatively to us poor creatures the existence of pain, suffering, waste,
whether caused or uncaused, whether in accordance with stern immutable
law or mere divine caprice, is a most indisputable reality: from our
point of view it is a cruel puerility to cry out at every calamity and
every iniquity that all is well in the best of possible worlds, and to
sing hymns of praise and glory to the goodness and mercy of a being of
supreme might, who planted us in this evil state and keeps us in it.
Voltaire's is no perfect philosophy; indeed it is not a philosophy at
all, but a passionate ejaculation; but it is perfect in comparison with
a cut and dried system like this of Rousseau's, which rests on a mocking
juggle with phrases, and the substitution by dexterous sleight of hand
of one definition for another.

Rousseau really gives up the battle, by confessing frankly that the
matter is beyond the light of reason, and that, "if the theist only