18. The Origin of Evil and the Evil in the Light of Spiritual Science

Then came the attempt at an Augustinian solution, which is not really one. But in this attempt, something typical occurs that will reappear again and again from then on; namely, Augustine does not allow evil to exist in its reality. He thinks that only good exists, and just as light can be found everywhere, but not in its full strength, but in the most diverse gradations, so evil is only a weak good with evils. Such solutions have been taken up again and again; they are an example of simply denying the world's riddles that could not be explained by their representatives. If, for example, Campbell called evil only the shadow of good, we doubt with good reason that evil can be understood by this; for us it is not much more than if one wanted to say: Cold is just another, a subspecies of heat, it is not something positive, but something negative, so we don't need to put on a fur coat to protect ourselves from it. Such a triviality had to be cited as an objection to characterize the value of the latter attempts at a solution.