therefore, as action involves belief, the will to do nothing--that is, to revert to the condition of mere inert matter, as matter is conceived by the materialist to exist. But though evil be illusive, though it is the fool who says in his own heart, "There is no God," or "Tush! He will not see it," the illusion is voluntary. It is we who deceive or sophisticate ourselves, when we will to believe that this act is not really wrong, or that our peculiar circumstances constitute a special, a highly special exception, on this occasion only, to the rules for ordinary occasions and ordinary men. And though the illusion is subjective, _i.e._ is not generally shared by the onlookers, and is consciously subjective (for we avoid onlookers, because they would spoil the illusion), nevertheless, subjective though it be, it is a fact in your particular subjective history, and a damning fact. If the evil that you will is confined in its range to your will, and if its existence can only be recreated by a fresh act of will in you or another, that is an argument to show that there is mercy in the scheme of things, but it does not prove that you incur no responsibility in offering yourself or another the example and the opportunity of doing wrong. We are not, and, if the will be free, we cannot be responsible for what others do; but we are responsible for what we do--for evil, if it be evil; for good, if we----but there is no pressing need to consider that contingency. The question underlying the previous paragraph is that of our social environment and its effects. We are apt to forget that _we_ are the social environment. If we bear the fact in mind, we shall perhaps be less inclined to seek the origin of all our misdeeds outside ourselves: we cannot shift the burden of our own wrong-doing on to the shoulders of society by any process which does not bring back at least an equivalent burden. The fact is that neither can we cause others, nor can others cause us to do evil. What we can do is to supply them with an opportunity, which, but for our action, would not indeed have existed, but which also, so far from necessitating evil action on their part, may by their free will be made the occasion for a victory over wrong. The fact, however, that they alone are responsible for their evil-doing prevents us from taking any credit for their good deeds. It is for our own acts of will that we are responsible, and it is by willing evil that we become evil. We create evil, consciously, by every wrong act of will that we perform, and then we talk of the origin of evil as a mystery, so thoroughly do we sophisticate ourselves! Why should there be evil? Why, indeed? There is no reason, no rational answer can be given, because evil is irrational--it is the will to reject the common reason or common sense or faith of mankind, in this detail or that. It is the arbitrary element, self-will, and if it could be eliminated we should