“There is one other thing I would like to make clear first, a historic question, but one that leads to the question of good and bad. What did the most illumined and inspired polytheists mean by their many gods?” Marian answered: “They meant many aspects of the one God.” “Just so, Marian. But now do you know the inner meaning of Trinity?” None of them knew, and all seemed particularly interested and anxious to understand. “I never understood,” said Marian, “what was meant by the Holy Ghost.” I said to them: “I will tell you what it has always meant to me, and to some others beside me, and you can see whether it seems true to you. To me the three are as parts of one. They are the contrast, such as man and God, good and bad, even night and day, and the understanding, the unity that makes these two one.” This needed much explanation. It was all summed up thus: The three in one—the triangle with three sides, which is still one—are: Myself, the other self, which I love and need for my completion, and the love and understanding which pass between us and make us one. Virginia said that she never thought of herself and the other self, that to her they were one. The idea was very new to them all, and did not at once convince them. “Now,” I said, “we see, however, that opposites are really one; and so I believe that good and bad are parts of the same thing. I believe that everything called bad is the price of going forward, of progress, that bad things are made by good things. Suppose that the world were in utter darkness, that no light were anywhere, then there would be no darkness, either. But the first flame of light would create the darkness.” As I developed this idea, the children said very little, only asking me questions, until I had finished. This is how I explained it: We all believe—we seven here—that the good is understanding, love, the complete Divine Self, and everything which leads thereto is good. Then everything bad is that which does not lead thereto; or, rather, that is called bad which has not gone so far as the rest. So that the bad is not an actual state—in this I agree with Ruth—but is a condition of good. All pains are growing pains. Things are bad only because we already have something better. The other day I heard Virginia saying that when reason came into the world, creatures first knew the bad; because they saw that the life they had lived was a bad life. So, you see, everything bad is something which we feel to be behind us, not equal to our best knowledge. Pain and badness are the price of progress, and we would rather go forward and suffer than stand still and be comfortable. We long to go forward to the good, to the vast self of complete understanding. “A criminal,” I said, “may be a man who would have been good if he had lived in savage times among savages, but at present he is bad because we are ahead of him.” “Then a bad man,” said Henry, “is one who is behind his times, or else ahead of them.”