Читать книгу Much Ado About Everything - Peter Milward - Страница 9

Consolation is good, commination is bad. Creation is good, annihilation is bad. Light is good, darkness is bad. Being is good, non-being is bad. Then what about such opposites? Are they good or bad? And what about that reconciliation of opposites which is said (by Nicholas of Cusa) to be realized in God? Surely it is good! And surely all these opposing entities are likewise good! Surely everything is good, and nothing is bad! As the exiled duke in As You Like It concludes his opening speech in the exile of Arden (which is close to Eden), there is “good in everything”.

That is just what we read in the opening account of creation in the Book of Genesis. At each stage or “day” of creation God sees that it is “good”, and at the end of his work of creation he sees that it is all “very good”. He is “the good God”, or as the Cure d’Ars kept on calling him, “le bon Dieu”. Everything he has made is good as he is good. Every good and perfect gift has come down to us, as James says in his epistle, from above, from the goodness of God.

That is also what Thomas Aquinas says, not precisely of God, but of “good”, that “being” and “good” are the same, and one can be said of the other. In Latin, “Ens et bonum convertuntur”, Being and Good may be converted into each other. In other words, whatever is, is good. Or, there is nothing that isn’t good. Light is good, as we read in the first day of creation, but so, too, is darkness. We don’t read of any creation of darkness, but the darkness comes out of the creation of light, and in relation to light it is likewise good. There are even mystics who say, “There is in God himself a deep but dazzling darkness.” Even in Psalm 139 we read, “The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”

Then what about the mosquito? How can so manifestly evil an insect have been created by the good God? Mustn’t we conclude that by the side of the good God there is an evil God? No, no, a thousand times no! In all creation there is only good. All creatures are good. So even the mosquito is good. Even in the mosquito we may recognize the presence of such virtues as humility, delicacy, patience and perseverance. When he stings us and draws blood from us, leaving an unpleasant itch behind him, that may be painful for us, but at least he may be said to be exercising us in the precious virtue of patience.

After all, what we have to recognize in all creatures as creatures, is that the good in them in not an absolute but a relative good. In some respects they may be good, but in other respects they may be deficient in good, and that is what we mean when we call them “bad”. We don’t like the mosquito to sting us, and so we call him a “bad insect”. But when we try to take our revenge and kill him, then he may call us “bad”. It is all on the level of particular causes that creatures are said to be variously good and bad in various respects – like the proverbial “curate’s egg”, which is said by the kind curate to be “good in parts”, though bad on the whole. That is what Aquinas explained about the “badness” of beings, that we call them “good” in view of the whole but “bad” in view of partial defects.

Well, it may be objected, that may be the case with the mosquito. Even if I can’t appreciate its good qualities, I have to admit the insect has them. I may even admit that he possibly looks on me, if I try to kill him, as “bad”. But now, what about the devil? Isn’t he totally evil? Isn’t he almost the wicked god (I hesitate to give him a capital letter) in contrast to the good God?

No, even the devil was once a good angel, even one of the greatest, named Lucifer, or “light-bearer”. As such he was created by the good God. Only, like all the angels, he was gifted with the powers of understanding and will, and these he abused in his original rebellion against God. And so he was thrust down into hell, with all his followers. But always there remains this interior contradiction in him between the goodness of his angelic nature and his disobedient will, and that is no doubt the cause of his continual suffering. As the devil says in Marlowe’s Faust, “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.” He can’t escape from himself.

Then there is the story of the little old woman, who always said charitable things about everyone. So someone tested her by asking her this very question, “What about the devil? Surely you can’t say anything good about the devil?” But she wittily replied, “Well, you have to admit he does his job very efficiently.” So one can say even of the devil what I have just been saying of the mosquito. It is also what Shakespeare’s Henry V says, “There is some soul of goodness in things evil.” And it is what his Isabella says when pleading for her enemy Lord Angelo, “They say best men are moulded out of faults.”

Here the very mention of “faults” reminds me of the golden paradox at the heart of the Catholic liturgy for the Easter Vigil, at the climax of the solemn hymn chanted by the deacon at the beginning of the ceremony, leading up to the phrase, “O felix culpa”, O happy fault of Adam, which merited to have such a Savior! Even the sin of Adam is said to have been happy, as it was more than counterbalanced by the salvation of Christ – and so the old Adam is revived and renewed by the new Adam.

So for the time being, as we wake up each morning and read the daily newspaper, we feel that the world is steadily, increasingly, inevitably drawing to its apocalyptic end. Yet, as Hamlet comes to realize, “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” And then somehow, though how we don’t know, all will be well.