There are people who think it is an evidence of superior Culture to show themselves pained by certain things; but it is not really that; they are pained because they are not cultured enough, or in the right way. . .
Nothing is good or ill But thinking makes it so.
They think it desirable to dislike things because they dislike them; if they thought it desirable not to dislike them, they would not dislike them.
Again, no one will accuse this writer of want of frankness; according to him, there is simply no such thing as objective evil--acts and individuals have no moral qualities or characters, but are such as we think them, and our business is so to think of them that they will not pain us. { 60} If we only knew aright, we should not regard anything as bad. If we are pained by the thought of fifty thousand hungry children in London elementary schools, or by the condition of Regent Street at night, it is because we are not "cultured" enough--we have not the right _gnosis_. When we reflect that anyone who consistently believes that "nothing is good or ill, but thinking makes it so," will inevitably, first or last, apply that comforting maxim to his own acts, we can see in what direction the ethics of Monism--in reality a return to the ultra-subjectivism of the Sophists, who made man the measure of all things--are likely to lead men. And yet, if the monistic presuppositions are valid--if the universe in all its phases expresses only one will--we do not see how these conclusions can be repelled.
But it is, perhaps, our last illustration, drawn from yet another writer of the same school, which will exhibit both the teaching under discussion and its practical dangers in the clearest light. We are told that--
_There is no will that is not God's will_. I do not mean that yours is not real, or that any man's is not real, but I do mean that nothing can happen to any of God's children--no matter how evil the intention of the person who does it, or how seemingly meaningless the calamity that causes it--which is not in some way the sacrament of God's love to us, and His call upon our highest energies. In a true and real sense, therefore, it is God's own doing and meant for our greater glory; . . . I believe in the infinitude of wisdom and love; _there is nothing else_.