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NO GOOD WITHOUT EVIL: Just take a look at the history of philosophy, at the number of philosophers from Plato to Kant who have designated men as either good or evil without apparently realizing that a 'good man' or a 'bad man' can never exist, never, that is, so long as men are compelled to conform to their individual standards of polar exchange, which is to say so long as they live.

Naturally, certain men appear good compared with lesser men, whose basic intellectual limitations, social hardships, and poor breeding lead them to commit actions which a more fortunate individual could only condemn. But this is far from saying that those greater men are not susceptible to evils themselves, and to evils, moreover, which conform to their class, occupation, age, and physiological coercion as men.

No man can call himself good simply because his higher intelligence, better standard of living, and finer breeding enable him to refrain from what might broadly be described as the evil tendencies of a lower class. It is not enough simply to avoid torturing or murdering people, openly ridiculing, cursing, raping, or fighting them; for one can usually do that without too great a strain upon oneself if one is of a sufficiently independent and noble turn-of-mind.

No, to become a 'good man' one would have to give-up reading certain books, say, murder mysteries; give-up listening to certain albums, say, hard rock; give-up watching certain films, say, horror videos; stop thinking certain thoughts, seeing certain people, taking certain sides, having certain beliefs, saying certain things, feeling certain emotions, dreaming certain dreams, indulging certain fantasies, etc., and one would have to give them up and/or or stop them to such an extent, to such a point of exclusivity, that there would be very little left one could do!

But would this drastic strategy for the eradication of personal evil in one's life really make one good, holy, saved? No, it wouldn't! For if one could get rid of all one's evil inclinations, there would be nothing good to fall back on, there would be no good left within oneself, since one's good inclinations only thrive with the assistance of their opposites, not without them! One would simply exist in a manner approximating to that in which certain Oriental sages have traditionally aspired to existing: neither a good man nor a bad man but effectively a thing, devoid of life, sitting under the branches of a tree all day with the imperturbability of a rock.

Thus wherever the healthy tendency of a will to life is concerned, there must always be varying degrees of good and evil. Conversely, wherever the unhealthy tendency of a will to antilife (death-in-life) is concerned, there can be neither good nor evil but an existence betokening death - a sort of blasphemy against life.