But
the teaching of Christ has been nominally accepted
by the world for many centuries, and yet those who
follow it are still persecuted as they were before the
time of Constantine. Experience has proved that
few are able to see through the apparent evils of an
outcast's life to the inner joy that comes of faith
and creative hope. If the domination of fear is to be
overcome, it is not enough, as regards the mass of
men, to preach courage and indifference to misfortune:
it is necessary to remove the causes of fear,
to make a good life no longer an unsuccessful one in
a worldly sense, and to diminish the harm that can
be inflicted upon those who are not wary in self-
defense.
When we consider the evils in the lives we know
of, we find that they may be roughly divided into
three classes. There are, first, those due to physical
nature: among these are death, pain and the
difficulty of making the soil yield a subsistence.
These we will call ``physical evils.'' Second, we may
put those that spring from defects in the character
or aptitudes of the sufferer: among these are ignorance,
lack of will, and violent passions. These we
will call ``evils of character.'' Third come those
that depend upon the power of one individual or
group over another: these comprise not only obvious
tyranny, but all interference with free development,
whether by force or by excessive mental influence
such as may occur in education.
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