Society And its Purpose
Book 4 - Psychological Laws and the End of Civil Societies
CHAPTER 8
Whether evil can be balanced and compensated by good
581. If evil could not be balanced and compensated by good, contentment of spirit would be impossible. Some evil is never lacking in the present life, and the smallest, uncompensated amount would be enough to make us miserable. On the other hand, after careful thought we see that it is hard to understand how balance and compensation between good and evil can be effected. Good does not destroy co-existent evil, and vice versa; both reside in us side by side, it would seem, without any compensation. Nevertheless, experience itself confirms the fact that evil is balanced and compensated by good.
582. For example, daily experience tells us that:
1. human beings willingly submit to suffering and evil in expectation of later pleasure and good;(278)
2. we in fact deprive ourselves of the pleasure and good we have or could have in order to avoid pain and evil.(279)
The first case is verified every time the desire to procure pleasure and good is greater than the fear of evil and pain. The second, when the fear of evil and pain prevails over our desire for good and the pleasure that accompanies good. In both cases we mentally compare the good and the evil, the pleasure and the pain; we balance them and evaluate their extent. If we find them of equal value and measure, we consider as zero the evil balanced by the good, and vice versa. This is an undeniable fact, a real compensation accomplished first in our judgment and then in our affections. But a difficulty remains: how is the fact possible? If evil is the opposite of good, how can good and evil have a common value? And without a common value, how can they be compared, totalled and neutralised by each other?
583. The difficulty is overcome by the distinction I have made between contentment of spirit and evil and good. Contentment is the third element and common measure which makes possible the balance and compensation of the good and evil in us.
Just as a thermometer indicates the degrees of both heat and cold, so contentment of spirit indicates the amount of evil and good contemporaneously present in us. Good and evil are not contentment, but the causes of contentment. Contentment is a simple state of our spirit from which evil separates us and to which good draws us. The contemporaneous action of evil and good produces a state more or less close to that of contentment and happiness.
584. Common sense therefore quite rightly accepts that evil can be compensated by good. Legislators of all nations justifiably consider it an incontrovertible truth, and determine compensation and restitution for those who suffer injury, violence or other evils caused by wickedness. Finally, philosophers are fully justified in carefully examining the bases of natural equity on which positive laws must determine compensation and restitution.
585. It is true that if we wished to examine the question more deeply, we would have to show how the simplicity of contentment is explained by the unity and simplicity of the subject and the subject's consciousness. We would then have to ascertain the nature of this subjective unity and simplicity. This in turn would lead us to the identity preserved by the subject in the midst of many different feelings and of many changes of place and time. We could not do this without examining the hidden depths of ontology. At present, we do not need to make such a deeply philosophical investigation; but we had to indicate the path to be followed.
Notes
(278) Mithridates, in his desire to know something about medicine, procured people who allowed their flesh to be cut or cauterised or poultices applied. Those who suffered these discomforts judged them of less value than the recompense they expected. Proof of this happens every day. People who willingly bury themselves in mines or wade through rice fields for money are never in short supply.
(279) Cf. M. Gioia's Dell' ingiuria, dei danni, del soddisfacimento, etc., pt. 2, bk. 1. for more facts which confirm everything I have said and are in any case commonplace.