Let us then limit them and once more ask ourselves, this time remaining within our sphere, what, after all, is this evil which Karma punishes? If we go to the very root of the matter, evil always arises from a lack of intelligence, from an erroneous and incomplete judgment, obscured or restricted by our egoism, which allows us to perceive only the proximate or immediate advantages of an action harmful to ourselves or others, while concealing the remote but inevitable consequences which such an action always ends by begetting. The whole science of ethics, after all, is based only upon intelligence; and what we call heart, sentiments, character is in fact nothing but accumulated and crystallized intelligence, inherited or acquired, which has become more or less unconscious and is transformed into habits or instincts. The evil which we do we do only because of a mistaken egoism, which sees the limits of its being too near at hand. As soon as intelligence raises the point of view of this egoism, the limits extend, widen and end by disappearing. The terrible and insatiable ego loses its centre of attraction and avidity and knows itself, finds itself and loves itself in all things. Let us not believe blindly in the intelligence of the wicked who succeed, or in the happiness of the criminal. We ought rather to see the converse, that is to say, the often hideous reality of the success; moreover, this intelligence, in the shape of skill, cunning or disloyalty, is a specialized intelligence, confined within a narrow circuit and, like a constricted jet of water, very effective when directed at a single point; but it is not a true and general, spacious and generous intelligence. Wherever the latter reveals itself, we necessarily find honesty, justice, forbearance, love and kindness, because there is a lofty and full horizon and because there is an instinctive or conscious knowledge of human proportions, of the eternity of existence and the brevity of life, of man’s position in the universe, of the mysteries that compass him about and the secret bonds that unite him to all things that we see as well as to all things that we do not see upon earth and in the heavens. 11