These we will call
``evils of power.'' A social system may be judged
by its bearing upon these three kinds of evils.
The distinction between the three kinds cannot
be sharply drawn. Purely physical evil is a limit,
which we can never be sure of having reached: we
cannot abolish death, but we can often postpone it by
science, and it may ultimately become possible to
secure that the great majority shall live till old age;
we cannot wholly prevent pain, but we can diminish
it indefinitely by securing a healthy life for all; we
cannot make the earth yield its fruits in any abundance
without labor, but we can diminish the amount
of the labor and improve its conditions until it ceases
to be an evil. Evils of character are often the result
of physical evil in the shape of illness, and still more
often the result of evils of power, since tyranny
degrades both those who exercise it and (as a rule)
those who suffer it. Evils of power are intensified
by evils of character in those who have power, and by
fear of the physical evil which is apt to be the lot of
those who have no power. For all these reasons, the
three sorts of evil are intertwined. Nevertheless,
speaking broadly, we may distinguish among our
misfortunes those which have their proximate cause in
the material world, those which are mainly due to
defects in ourselves, and those which spring from our
being subject to the control of others.
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