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NEITHER ANGEL NOR DEMON: We are neither angels nor demons but that compromise between them which is called man. It is as impossible to prevent man from doing evil as it is to prevent him from doing good. Even those people who imagine themselves to be what D.H. Lawrence described as 'lopsided on the side of the angels' are undoubtedly deluded in supposing themselves to be wholly good. How can anyone living in this world be wholly good when our metaphysical condition requires that we function according to the dictates of polar influences, and not degenerate into some kind of moral eunuch hardly capable of killing a fly?

Indeed, when one realizes that not even the saints can have been wholly good, what chance does anyone else have of eliminating their evil tendencies and thereby transforming themselves into something which transcends our physiological coercion to accept both good and evil as equally important, equally interdependent, and, above all, equally inescapable? One might as well try squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle.

But how, then, do I define good and evil? Simply by relating that which proceeds from positive feelings to goodness and, conversely, that which proceeds from negative feelings to evil. Thus a genuine smile is a good, a genuine scowl an evil. Pleasure is good, pain evil. Love is good, hate evil. Hope is good, fear evil.

Incidentally, one is indulging in evil every time one complains about anything, since the tendency to complain inevitably engenders negative feelings: anger, resentment, fear, or hate. One drops a hammer on one's foot and one experiences pain. Pain is a physical evil which causes one to curse. Cursing is the inevitable mental evil which results from pain. One's evil is justified.