Samuel Johnson: On the Problem of Evil

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Naga Sadhus or Hindu holy men, smeared with ash, pass on a chillum to smoke inside their makeshift camps near the confluence of the river Ganges and the Bay of Bengal, ahead of the “Makar Sankranti” festival at Sagar Island, south of Kolkata, India: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 13 January 2016

Samuel Johnson: from Review of Soame Jenyns, A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, in The Literary Magazine, 17 July 1757

Having thus despatched the consideration of particular evils, he comes, at last, to a general reason, for which evil may be said to be our good. He is of opinion, that there is some inconceivable benefit in pain, abstractedly considered; that pain, however inflicted, or wherever felt, communicates some good to the general system of being, and, that every animal is, some way or other, the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far, as to suppose, that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction is communicated to all corporeal nature; and, that the evils suffered on this globe, may, by some inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of the inhabitants of the remotest planet.

Israeli soldiers from the home front command unit take part in a drill simulating a non-conventional attack at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the southern city of Beersheba, Israel on Wednesday: photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters, 13 January 2016

How the origin of evil is brought nearer to human conception, by any inconceivable means, I am not able to discover. We believed, that the present system of creation was right, though we could not explain the adaptation of one part to the other, or account for the whole succession of causes and consequences. Where has this inquirer added to the little knowledge that we had before? He has told us of the benefits of evil, which no man feels, and relations between distant parts of the universe, which he cannot himself conceive. There was enough in this question inconceivable before, and we have little advantage from a new inconceivable solution.

A Nepalese worker demolishes a house that was destroyed during an earthquake at Sankhu, on the outskirts of capital Kathmandu, Nepal on Wednesday: photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA, 13 January 2016

I do not mean to reproach this author for not knowing what is equally hidden from learning and from ignorance. The shame is, to impose words, for ideas, upon ourselves or others. To imagine, that we are going forward, when we are only turning round. To think, that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which, by his own confession, cannot be conceived.

An Afghan man kisses his daughter as he walks near an attack from a building close to the Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad. A suicide bombing followed by gunfire rocked an area near the Pakistani consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday: photo by Noorullah Shirzada/AFP, 13 January 2016

But, that he may not be thought to conceive nothing but things inconceivable, he has, at last, thought on a way, by which human sufferings may produce good effects. He imagines, that as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us, for the ends, only, of their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which, by analogy, is so strongly confirmed.

 A Kashmiri fisherman rows his boat on Dal lake during dense fog in Srinagar: photo by Mustafa Tauseef via FT Photo Diary, 13 January 2016

I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown, that these "hunters, whose game is man," have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves, now and then, with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the air-pump. To swell a man with a tympany is as good sport as to blow a frog. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diversions; for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which, undoubtedly, must make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend. Perhaps, now and then, a merry being may place himself in such a situation, as to enjoy, at once, all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain, exhibited together. 

People collect their belongings from a heavily damaged building in the aftermath of a car bomb explosion in commercial area of New Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday: photo by Khalid Mohammed/AP, 12 January 2016

One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head, thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions, till, in time, they make their plaything an author; their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises, perhaps, to a political irony, and is, at last, brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible to be understood. Sometimes, however, it happens, that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain, but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to one another, as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying his own applause and that of his companions, and, perhaps, is elevated with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect.

A relief convoy carrying aid entering the besieged Syrian town of Madaya. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said 44 trucks loaded with food and other aid entered the rebel-held town, while 21 other trucks went to the government-controlled towns of Fuaa and Kafraya on Tuesday: photo by ICRC/AFP, 12 January 2016

Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure! The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it; and how will either of those be put more in our power, by him who tells us, that we are puppets, of which some creature, not much wiser than ourselves, manages the wires! That a set of beings, unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies, to see our limbs quiver; torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries; sometimes obstructing the bile, that they may see how a man looks, when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a traveller's bones, to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat, for the greater elegance of his hide.

 

An Afghan man kisses his daughter as he walks near an attack from a building close to the Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad. A suicide bombing followed by gunfire rocked an area near the Pakistani consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday: photo by Noorullah Shirzada/AFP, 13 January 2016

This is an account of natural evil, which though, like the rest, not quite new, is very entertaining, though I know not how much it may contribute to patience. The only reason why we should contemplate evil is, that we may bear it better; and I am afraid nothing is much more placidly endured, for the sake of making others sport.

 A Kashmiri fisherman rows his boat on Dal lake during dense fog in Srinagar: photo by Mustafa Tauseef via FT Photo Diary, 13 January 2016

A Nepalese worker demolishes a house that was destroyed during an earthquake at Sankhu, on the outskirts of capital Kathmandu, Nepal on Wednesday: photo by Narendra Shrestha/EPA, 13 January 2016

 

Naga Sadhus or Hindu holy men, smeared with ash, pass on a chillum to smoke inside their makeshift camps near the confluence of the river Ganges and the Bay of Bengal, ahead of the “Makar Sankranti” festival at Sagar Island, south of Kolkata, India: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 13 January 2016

A relief convoy carrying aid entering the besieged Syrian town of Madaya. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said 44 trucks loaded with food and other aid entered the rebel-held town, while 21 other trucks went to the government-controlled towns of Fuaa and Kafraya on Tuesday: photo by ICRC/AFP, 12 January 2016