The Problem of Evil in "Paradise Lost"

Author(s): Allan H. Gilbert

Source: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1923), pp. 175-194
Published by: University of Illinois Press
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 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN PARADISE LOST
Death and life, evil and good, sin and repentance, suffering
and joy, condemnation and redemption are perennial problems
of man, on which Milton, as an interpreter of the mysteries of
life, meditated long and deeply. Many have endeavored to set
forth his teachings, yet they have not fully explained his concep
tion of the problem of evil.1
In the introductory verses of Paradise Lost, the poet an
nounces his subject:

That to the highth of this great argument

I may assert eternal providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

These words have been weighed. To "assert" is to declare

with assurance, or state positively, and to "justify" is to main
tain as just. Milton intends to affirm that God's providence is
just. Some readers, overlooking the word "assert," have taken

"justify" to mean "prove the justice of." One of these is

who after the poem re
Bagehot's mathematician, reading
marked: "But after all, Paradise Lost proves nothing." He
ignorantly stated an important truth: Paradise Lost is not a
piece of argument, but a poem, and hence an imaginative work
which cannot prove anything. Milton was familiar enough
with the nature of poetry to understand that, and indicates
that he uses the poet's rather than the logician's method by
employing the word "assert," which conveys the idea of a
declaration Moreover, even the
unsupported by argument.
poet's assertion of justice is not unqualified. He has been at
some pains to give emphasis to the phrase "to the highth of this
great argument" by placing it in the forefront of his clause. It
may be paraphrased, "so far as my subject, the story of Adam
and Eve, makes possible." Milton was too conversant with
1Professor
C. A. Moore, in an excellent article on The Conclusion of Para
dise Lost (Publications of theModern Language Association 36. 1) refers to much
of the preceding literature. A recent book of importance is La Pens?e de
Milton (Paris 1920) by Dr. Denis Saurat. [See also the discussion of the in
fluence of Jakob Boehme upon Milton's conception of Evil inMilton and Jakob
Boehme by Dr. M. L. Bailey (Oxford University Press. New York, 1914),
p. 148 ff.?Editor.]

175

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176 Gilbert

the myths of Plato to believe that a myth was a logical proof,

and from Lucretius he had observed that the fully didactic
poet does not employ narrative. He ranked himself with the
singer of heroic actions rather than with the establisher of
systems, comparing his subject with "the wrath of stern
Achilles," and the wanderings of "the Greek and Cytherea's
son." Yet certainly, he did not think himself a mere story
teller, and chose the subject of Paradise Lost partly because of
the ideas implicit in it, just as he sought as the chief character for
his projected poem on British history a knight who would be
the "pattern of a Christian hero."
When once Milton's story had been chosen, certain things
could not be altered. Among these was the temptation of
Eve by the serpent, which must be interpreted as Satan. To
speak of Satan led to giving the account of his fall. But
to narrate the war in heaven was not part of Milton's primary
purpose. He does not mention it in the first few lines of the
poem, and the account of the rebellion is episodic; not part
of the main story, but a narrative to explain why Adam and
Eve may fear Satan. It serves other purposes as well, adding
action on a the character of Satan, and
large scale, developing
showing how evil leaders hold their influence in spite of the
protests of the more acute of the by
mass?represented
Abdiel. Yet to take the Fifth and Sixth Books as offering a
serious explanation of the origin of evil is as absurd as to take
the allegory of the birth of Sin as an adequate explanation of
it. Milton, however, evidently expected that his audience
would not be limited to the fit though few, and for the pur
pose of guiding aright the prosaic he has remarked more than
once that in telling of events in heaven he proceeds

By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms,

As may express them best.2

A poet could hardly say more clearly that he was writing alle
gorically.
From Milton's allegory emerge certain facts of belief:
Evil has come into and is now in the world; evil is opposed to
good, and yet subservient to it, for good is absolute over the
universe. Paradise Lost is a song of faith and hope, yet not of
2
5.573-4. Cf. 6. 893 and 7. 112.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 177

the perverse faith that denies the reality of sin and suffering.
The majority of men assent to Milton's propositions in their
abstract form. To such the difficulties of the poem are alle
gorical. They may admit that good rules, and that evil has
its in as Ruskin3 . . is to its
use, that, says, "good. developed

highest by contention with evil," but when they read that God,
in something like human form, permits Satan, also in something
like human form, to attack and injure an innocent creature,
some revolt, asking: Why did not God keep Satan chained in
hell? or even, instead of accepting Satan, they ask: Why did
not God keep Satan good? These two questions are funda
one.
mentally
Milton's answer to the second is incidental, because his
serious concern is not with Satan se. However, we learn
per
that the rebel angels were free to stand or fall, and

by their own suggestion fell,

Self-tempted, self-depraved.4

Their will was to choose evil rather than good, and they are
satisfied with their choice, though they object to its consequences
of eternal punishment. Satan has looked his sin in the face
and decided that evil shall be his good. He may be thought
of as a type of the unpardonable sinner of the Middle Ages,
who has despaired of the mercy of God, and hardened himself
in his sin. This hardened and conscious sinner, whose sur
passing egotism cannot admit any law but his own will, possesses
characteristics which, though perverted, were originally
admirable. Capacity for leadership, such as Satan possesses,
is in itself a magnificent trait, though its exercise may be evil.
Milton was not a romantic sentimentalist, and hence did not
feel that he must make Satan good at last, like the villain
in the last scene of a comedy.
But however admirable Milton's study of Satan as a highly
gifted egotist, the Devil is chiefly the allegorical presentation
of the evil of the world, in its alluring and in its hideous aspects.
Hence Satan is used not to show the origin of evil so much as to
personify its present existence. Milton was so familiar with
this conventional personification that he felt no hesitation in
using it. Satan?wonderful character that he is?is a poetical
3 on Art,
Lectures The Relation of Art toMorals.
*P.L.3. 129-30.

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 178 Gilbert

character, and not the keystone of Milton's theology. His

activity in Paradise Lost is necessary to a vivid story, but not to
man's continued Indeed, after he has started man on
ill-doing.
a career of evil, he might as well have retired permanently from
the world, for the poet has no further need for him. Man is
then quite able to provide enough wickedness and suffering
without the assistance of Satan. Though the Devil furnishes
the deceptive arguments leading to man's first transgression,
he makes no change in man's mind. Man's fall is partly the
result of "his own folly."5 Eve is before Satan's appearance
provided with the love of wandering, with pride, and with
other dangerous or evil dispositions that need but an outlet.
And Adam has already deserved the angel's warning that he
shall not yield his reason to his admiration for Eve. These
tendencies might have brought about disobedience without
Satan's intervention, just as the descendants of Adam and
Eve need no stimulus to evil.
supernatural
And the same ability of man to sin for himself is recognized
in the treatise On Christian Doctrine, in which Satan hardly
more than appears. In the brief section Of the Special Govern
ment of Angels we read that Satan and his followers were, like
the good angels, created by God, and that they are "sometimes
permitted to wander throughout the whole earth, the air, and
the heaven itself, to execute the judgments of God," and that
Satan is "the author of all wickedness, and the opponent of all
good." Yet in the chapter Of the Fall of Our First Parents we
learn that the first sin originated not alone "in the instigation
of the devil," but also "in the liability to fall with which man
was created, whereby he, as the devil had done before him,
'abode not in the truth,' John 8. 44, 'nor kept his own habita
tion,' Jude 6." The primal sin was a "transgression of the
whole law":

For in it what sin did man not perpetrate? deserving condemnation for
'trust in Satan and equally for lack of trust in God, unfaithful, ungrateful,
disobedient, gluttonous, Adam uxorious, Eve too inconsiderate of her

husband, and each one too inconsiderate of his children, the whole human
race; each one a murderer of his children, a thief, and a plunderer of what
was not his own, a sacrilegious person, a liar, a crafty and unworthy seeker
for divinity, proud and arrogant.6

5P. L. 3. 153.
6C?m*. Doct. 1.11.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 179

In further discussion of the Fall, Milton attributes it to the

"evil of man, and elsewhere speaks of the
concupiscence"

original of the world as contaminated

matter "through the
enticements of the devil, or those which originate in man him
self."7 Thus in Milton's system of theology Satan, though
mentioned, is of so little consequence that we get no hint of
the brilliant personification of Paradise Lost. We must infer
that Milton includes the literal Satan in his system through
deference to Scripture, and not because he had a real need for a
Devil in his philosophy. The treatise would not be greatly
affected if Satan were wholly left out. This bringing of the
Adversary into his system of theology out of deference to the
faint dualism of the Bible is Milton's nearest approach to
Manichean doctrines.8

On the Milton not Satan as created

contrary, only represents

by God and absolutely under divine sway, but one of his chief
philosophical tenets9 is the antithesis of dualism. This tenet
is almost independent of literal interpretation of Scripture,
notwithstanding Milton's assertion that his theological treatise
is based on Scripture.10 It is thus expressed:
That matter should have been of God ... is incon
always independent
ceivable. . . There remains but one solution of the difficulty, for which
moreover we have the authority of Scripture, namely, that all things are
. . The of which we speak is not to be looked
of God. original matter
upon as an evil or trivial thing,
but as intrinsically good, and the chief
productive stock of every subsequent good. It was a substance, and de
rivable from no other source than from the fountain of every substance. . .

Matter, like the form and nature of the angels itself, proceeded incor

ruptible from God; and even since the fall (post peccatum) it remains
as far as concerns its essence. Since . . . God did not
incorruptible
produce everything out of nothing, but of himself, I proceed to consider
the necessary consequences of this doctrine, namely, that if all things are
not only from God, but of God, no created thing can be finally annihilated.11

7Christ. Bod.
1.7, p. 180.
8 In this I dissent that Satan
from Professor
Moore (op. cit.), who believes
is important inMilton's theology.
9This is discussed by Professor Saurat (op. cit. pp. 146 ff.).
10This assertion should not be taken absolutely, for Milton is indebted for
both material and method to theological and philosophical predecessors. How
ever, he has not blindly accepted the opinions of any one, but has taken only
such suggestions as were in harmony with his own thought and his own inter

pretation of scripture.
11
Christ. Doct. 1.7, pp. 178-81.

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 180 Gilbert

Though to his creatures, Satan and man, the Almighty has

given freedom of action, and hence the power of contaminating,
though not of fundamentally changing, the original material,
the world is absolutely God's.
But why, inMilton's allegory, did God allow Satan to attack
man? The answer is that Milton saw that evil was active in
the world, that it was persistent, and that there was no sign
that man soon would be free from sorrow and suffering. If evil
was to be personified at all, it must be by a character who
expressed its nature; hence Milton's Satan?the embodiment
of the troubles which afflict mankind.
This personification brings before us the truth that evil
call it what we will, imperfection or maladjustment?is present,
and that the directing power of the universe gives it a chance to
work. Such a view of the world not infrequently meets objec
tions. Some men stigmatize as immoral a directing power that
allows an evil or imperfect world to keep on going, nay more,
that keeps the world imperfect. More definitely, they say
that Milton's God seems very slow in expressing his omnipotent
or even that he seems not to be
goodness, omnipotent.
Such supposed objections to Milton's scheme are not objec
tions; on the contrary, they say, in un-Miltonic language, what
Milton himself would have said; indeed, if he had not said such
things he would not have written his poem. He had felt in
many a dark hour that evil was persistent and overwhelming,
that Satan was going forth conquering and to conquer.
But he also had attained the belief that, however men might
be afflicted, mankind?and even individual men?need not
wholly despair. In Paradise Lost he aimed to paint the world
as it is, in all its blackness and all its hope. This hope is
based on the faith that, however often the contrary appears
true, good is ultimate. Individuals may perish, yet there is a
chance for man to emerge through affliction. Evil is not
dominant; though wickedness is strong, righteousness gains
the mastery. Consequently, wherever evil appears, good is also
to be found in intimate relation to it; and yet more, the actions
of the forces of evil often result in good, because the general
tendency of the universe is good.
This intimate connection of good and evil is again and again
alluded to and exemplified in the poem. It first appears in

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 181

the mouth of Satan, as he declares that his purpose must be

contrary to that of God:
If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.12

Satan here correctly defines the position of the Almighty as well

as his own. When the Adversary speaks these words he lies
prostrate on the burning lake of hell, from which he rises to
work evil only by divine sufferance:
nor ever thence
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation, while he sought

Evil to others, and enraged might see
How all his malice
served but to bring forth
Infinitegoodness, grace and mercy shewn
On man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured.13

This is the main idea of the poem; taken from its allegorical
language, it means that evil is self-destructive, and that good
is ever-living. By placing this passage here, Milton warns his
reader that the diabolical activity to follow, though sufficiently
harmful, is not so terrible as the devils believe. The next
statement of the final impotence of evil is put, curiously
enough,
in the mouth of the sophistical Belial, who counsels his fellows
to sit inactive because they cannot hope to foil the
Almighty:
He
from heaven's highth
All these our motions
vain, sees and derides;
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.14

Yet Beelzebub, though willing to admit the power of the

Almighty, stillbelieves that the divine vigilance may be evaded,

12P. L. 1.162-8.
13P. L. 1.210-20.
14P. L. 2.190-3.

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182 Gilbert

and proposes that the devils seek out and attack man. They
adopt this plan, hoping
to confound the race
Of mankind in one root, and earth with hell
To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great creator.15

Milton comments:
But their spite still serves
His glory to augment.

In pursuance of their resolution, Satan sets out to discover the

realm assigned to man by God, and after a perilous voyage ap
proaches the universe. As he draws near, God beholds him
with all-seeing eye, and foreknows the success that will attend
his efforts for the perversion of man. The success of Satan is
not the result of divine failure, for man, the Almighty asserts,
had of me
All he could have.16

Man has been equipped to resist Satan, and has received

reason, with the power of choice, and free will. Yet in spite of
his adequate equipment, man will be deceived. And because he
is deceived and has not, like the devils, deliberately resolved
on evil, he can be restored to his normal and natural state of
goodness. Yet this restoration, like the fall, depends on man's
choice. And as a ransom of man from divine justice, which
exacts full punishment, the Son offers himself.
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate.17

While this plan, assuring the restoration of at least a

portion of the human race, is being perfected in heaven, Satan
is passing on toward the earth to begin his evil work. By the
arrangement of events here, Milton, in dramatic fashion,
declares his belief in the supremacy of good, as when Satan
rose from the burning lake he had plainly stated it. The
reader is henceforth aware that however successful Satan's
efforts may be for the moment, they are forestalled before they
are undertaken.

15P. L. 2.382-6.
16P. L. 3.97-8.
17P. L. 3.298.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 183

Having thus emphasized the limited power of evil, Milton for

a time does not explicitly mention it. Then he comments on
the war in heaven:

All heaven
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread,
Had not th' Almighty Father where he sits
Shrined in his Sanctuary of heaven secure,
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen
This tumult, and permitted all, advised:
That his great purpose he might so fulfill,
To honor his Anointed Son avenged

Upon his enemies, and to declare

All power on him transferred.18

And in a speech immediately following, the Almighty declares

that he has so governed the tumult as to manifest the Son

worthiest to be heir
Of all things.19

This tells us allegorically that the forces of evil are not inde
pendent even at the height of their fury, and that the same
power can overcome them as is concerned with the of
recovery
man. When the narrative of the overthrow of Satan in heaven
has been finished, the poet comments on its main idea, of which
the allegorical application is evident, by saying that the evil was

soon
Driven back redounded as a flood on those
From whom it sprung, impossible to mix
With Blessedness.20

The positive form of this assertion appears in the angelic songs

celebrating the intended creation of man:

to him
Glory and praise, whose wisdom had ordained
Good out of evil to create, in stead
Of spirits malign a better race to bring
Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse
His good to worlds and ages infinite.21

18P. L.
6.669.
19Ibid.
6.707.
20P. L. 7.56.
21P. L.
7.186-91.

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184 Gilbert

The words "good out of evil to create" are probably to be taken

not literally, but as explained by what immediately follows
them. At the end of the creation, which especially represents
the replacement of evil by good through the substitution of
man for the fallen angels, the angelic song repeats the thought :
Who seeks
To lessen
thee, against his purpose serves
To manifest the more thy might: his evil
Thou usest, and from thence creat'st more good.22

This is well realized by Satan, who, when seeking for man in the
garden, soliloquizes on him as
son of despite
Whom us the more to spite his Maker raised
From dust.23

And Satan knows also the self-destructiveness of evil:

Revenge, at first though sweet,

Bitter ere long back on itself recoiles.24

Yet to know this does not shake his determination to have

revenge. After Satan's success, Sin and Death follow him to the
world. As they draw toward it the Almighty, beholding them,
speaks among the angels:
See with what heat these dogs of hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created, and had still

Kept in that state, had not the folly of man

Let in these wasteful furies, who impute
Folly to me (so doth the prince of hell
And his adherents) that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heavenly, and conniving seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,
That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule;
And know not that I called and drew them thither
My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure.25
22P. L.
7.613-17.
23P. L.
9.178-8.
24P.L. 9.171-2.
25P. L. 10.616-32.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 185

Again we observe the self-destructive character of evil. After

the fall, Adam in his vision sees the future of the world, and
learns the conditions of human life. Having seen, he exclaims:
O goodness infinite, goodness immense !
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that by which creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness.26

God is
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek.27

Thus far the poet's story has given him ample opportunity
to assert that evil is self-destructive, and that good continually
overcomes evil. But his belief went further than that; he held
that in the present order evil has its necessary place. This
settled conviction is stated in the Areopagitica:

It was from out the rinde of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good
and evil as two twins
cleaving together leapt forth into the world. And
perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil,
that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now
is, what wisdom can there be to choose, continence to forbear, with
what
out the knowledge of evil? He that apprehend can
and consider vice
with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distin
guish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring
Christian.- I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised
and unbreathed, that never and sees her adversary,
sallies out but slinks
out of the race, where that immortal
garland is to be run for, not without
dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world; we

bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by
what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in
the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises
to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her white
ness is but'an excremental whiteness. Which was the reason why our
sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better
teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the
person of Guy on, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mam
mon and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet
abstain. Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this

26P. L.
12.469-73.
27P. L.
12.565-9.

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186 Gilbert

world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning

of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with
less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all
manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason?

This is also the opinion of Eve, expressed when she wishes to

go forth alone on the morn of the temptation:
And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed
Alone, without exterior help sustained?28

It is difficult to feel that Milton did not sympathize with Eve,

though he has Adam assure her that "trial will come unsought."
The highest character is, then, the one developed to
the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom,29

which Milton believed the highest theme for poetry, and which
he celebrated in Paradise Regained. The truth that human
perfection comes only through suffering is especially apparent
in Jesus, of whose life as it is revealed to him Adam remarks:
I learn . . . that for truth's sake
suffering
Is fortitude to highest victory,
And to the faithful death the gate of life;

Taught this by his example whom I now

Acknowledge my redeemer ever blest.30

Michael replies:
This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum
Of wisdom. . . . only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love,

By name to come called charity, the soul

Of all the rest; then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this paradise, but shalt possess
A paradise within thee, happier far.31

The last two words are especially worth noting. The Adam
who has sinned and through effort risen again is "happier
far" than the sinless Adam of the garden. The nature of man
was, it is true, originally good and pure, but the wisdom of
human experience and the excellence gained through suffering
29P. L. 9.335-6.
29P. L. 9.31-2.
30P. L. 12.561-73.
31P. L. 12.575-87.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 187

are still better. Nor is this an outburst of over-enthusiasm on

the angel's part, for in the treatise De Doctrina Christiana we
read:

The Restoration of Man is the act whereby man, being delivered from
sin and death by God the Father through Jesus Christ, is raised to a far
more excellent state of grace and glory than that from which he had fallen.32

This describes man not in heaven, but when dwelling on the

earth after redemption and renovation. Adam, when he
realizes the good to come and its association with evil, finds his
repentance mixed with and overcome by joy, and exclaims:
full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned, or rejoice
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,
To God more glory, more good will to Men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.33

The same truth is also expressed in the words of the Almighty

to the Son:

Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss

Equal to God, and equally enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted all to save
A world from utter loss, and hast been found
By merit more than birthright Son of God,
Found worthiest to be so by being good,
Far more than great or high; because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds,
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne;
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and man, son both of God and man,
Anointed Universal King; all power
I give thee, reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits.34

Though throned in bliss from his creation, the divine Messiah

is rendered nobler and more powerful by his willingness to enter
the conflict with evil.
Even death, ordained as man's punishment, like other
sufferings is finally a blessing. It cannot be otherwise consis

321.14 (Sumner's translation).

33P. L. 12.473-8.
34P. Z, 3.305-19.

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 188 Gilbert

tently with Milton's belief in the grace that brings good out of
evil. By the gate of death man, purified by suffering, enters
on a second life better than the present one. This is stated by
the Father:
I at first with two fair gifts
Created him endowed, with happiness
And immortality; that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe,
Till I provided death; so death becomes
His final remedy, and after life
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined
By faith and faithful works, to second life,
Waked in the renovation of the just,

Resignes him up with heaven and earth renewed.36

And the state of the new earth shall be better than that of the
unpolluted garden, for the Son will come
to reward
His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in heaven or earth, for then the earth
Shall be all paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days.36

This future state is without evil; yet it is to be possessed only

by those who are faithful in the struggle against evil. The
utmost happiness is dependent on and conditioned by the
evil of the world.
Yet Milton is not considering the origin of evil, or trying to
justify its entrance into the world; his concern is with the world
as it is. He does not feel that a world with wickedness in it is
inconsistent with a wise and good God, and his belief in omnipo
tence does not cause him to hold that the Almighty could have
brought forth the highest good without the contrast of bad.
The virtue developed by the contest with evil justifies the
presence of evil. The high experience associated with suffering
is more than compensation for it.

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

In the eyes of Achilles the short life of hardship, with glory,

was better than the long and prosperous life of the inglorious

^P.L. 11.57-66.
36P. L. 12.461-5.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 189

man. Milton did not imagine a divine power that could make
man wise with the wisdom of experience, happy with the happi
ness of attempt and accomplishment, except through contact
with evil. Hence he has God allow evil, in allowing Satan to
come from his dungeon in the "utter darkness" of Chaos into
the world,

That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation, while he sought

Evil to others.37

Thisis sometimes considered an injustice to Satan, but the

Adversary is not obliged to wreak revenge on man. He is left
to his own designs, and his seeking of evil for others is in itself
his damnation.

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell,38

he exclaims as he meditates revenge. we have seen

Moreover,
that he is not Milton's primary concern; the poet takes him as
given, with the explanation that he chose evil at the beginning,
and continues to choose it.

Having seen that the work of Satan is not the keystone of

Milton's theory of sin, we better understand the poet's belief
that God is not the author of evil, though evil beings are his
creation. Their evil is their own, to which God abandons them
when they have no desire for salvation. Indeed, God's "govern
ment of the universe . . . should be understood as to
relating
natural and civil concerns, to things indifferent and fortuitous,
in a word, to anything rather than to matters of morality and
religion."39 "The end which a sinner has in view is generally
something evil and unjust, from which God uniformly educes a
good and just result, thus as it were creating light out of dark
ness."40 Suffering is also employed by the Almighty as a punish
ment for sin. It is sometimes absolute, as in hell, sometimes?
as in Dante's Purgatory?"a saving medicine, ordained of God
both for the public and private good of man."41 Even to the
righteous, affliction may come in the form of temptation "for
37P. L.
1.214-16.
38P. L.
4.75.
39
Christ. Doct. 1.12, p. 268.
40
Christ. Doct. 1.8, p. 204.
41
Reason of Church Government, Book 2, chap. 3.

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 190 Gilbert

the purpose of exercising or manifesting their faith or patience,

as in the case of Abraham and Job; or of lessening their self
confidence, and reproving their weakness, that both they them
selves may become wiser by experience, and others may profit
by their example."42
The chief
punishment for sin is, however, the sin itself,
which brings spiritual death. "This death consists, first, in the
loss, or at least in the obscuration to a great extent of that right
reason which enabled man to discern the chief good, and in
which consisted as it were the life of the understanding. . . .
It consists, secondly, in that deprivation of righteousness and
liberty to do good, and in that slavish subjection to sin and the
devil, which constitutes, as it were, the death of the will."43
Michael impresses this loss of the "good of the intellect," as
Dante puts it, on Adam:
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost, which always with right reason dwells
Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being:
Reason in man obscured or not obeyed,

Immediately inordinate desires

And upstart passions catch the government
From reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free.44

And the Almighty thus describes the fate of the man willfully
evil:
This my long sufferance and my day of grace
They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;
But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on and deeper fall;
And none but such from mercy I exclude.45

Milton sums up his position in the words:

It ought not to be doubted that sin in itself alone is the heaviest of all
evils, as being contrary to the chief good, that is, to God.46

The justice of a punishment which naturally results from the

sin, and is not arbitrarily inflicted, is evident.

42
Christ. Doct. 1.8, p. 209.
"Christ. Doct. 1.12, p. 265.
44P. L. 12.83-90.
?P. L. 3.198-202.
t?
Christ. Doct. 1.12, p. 266.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 191

But though sin becomes the Almighty's instrument of pun

ishment, "God, who is infinitely good, cannot be the doer of
wickedness or of the evil of sin; on the contrary, of the wicked
ness of men he Sin is the result of man's
produces good."47
choice, has put man into the world without making
for God
"infringement on the liberty of the human will; otherwise man
would be deprived of the power of free agency, not only with
regard to what is right, but with regard to what is indifferent,
or even Milton
positively wrong."48 wholly rejects predesti
nation, putting in the mouth of the Almighty the words:

No decree of mine
Concurring to necessitate his fall,
Or touch with lightest moment of impulse
His free will, to her own inclining left
In even scale.49

Milton well that many make

realized bad use of their
precious freedom; they do not triumph over evil, and fail to
share the joys of the conqueror. Yet these have been given the
choice between good and evil, for however foolish the use
they make of their freedom, a world in which

will and reason (reason also is choice)

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,50

is satisfying to neither God nor man. As Milton believed that

earthly rulers of church and state had no right to exercise com
pulsion in matters of religion, so he did not doubt that it was
better for men to be free, even though freedom led to damna
tion, than that they should be virtuous by compulsion.
Milton does not consider the class whom we now
regard
as the helpless victims of heredity and environment. He was
not careless of their as he shows such remarks as
existence, by
that for want of proper education the English nation "perishes,"
and that those who should be the teachers of the Church are
"grievous wolves" who their sheep." But for
neglect "hungry
the individual, Milton does not set the standard of attainment,

47
Christ.Doct. 1.8, p. 201.
Doct. Christ. 1.8, p. 200.
49P. L.
10.43-7.
50P. L.
3.108-10.

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 192 Gilbert

necessary to salvation very high, requiring no more than

genuine effort.

To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,

Though but endeavored with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut,50a

declares the Father. Milton's heaven is open to the English

men perishing for want of suitable instruction, secular and
religious. Learning is not essential to salvation; the poet can
look with approval on a clergy without university training.
Hence the number of men who can secure salvation if they will
is large, for "God undoubtedly gives grace to all, if not in equal
measure, at least sufficient for attaining knowledge of the truth
and final salvation," and "an adequate proportion of saving
grace" is "withheld from no man."51 Even at the last Judgment
"the rule of judgment will be the conscience of each individual,
according to the measure of light which he has enjoyed."52
If Milton laid a heavy responsibility on the individual, he
allowed even the most ignorant and unfortunate the dignity of
their own fate.
mastering
Yet even with the fullest opportunity, the number who
fail of salvation is very large. Milton does not, however,
feel that this derogates from the justice of God, for justice
consists in giving man the power of choice, with which he
is nobler, even happier, under condemnation, than he would be if
saved by irresistible necessity. Milton is not an unflinching opti
mist, and has no thought of a present world wholly good. His
eyes take in all its evil; indeed, he was severe in his judgments,
and inclined to see more evil than do many more recent ob
servers.

He was the more able to trust in faith and good works

because he was concerned with the race and not with the
individual alone. He judges the human race by its best ex
amples, and takes comfort from the blessedness it attains in a
few individuals, Job53 or Jesus himself. To produce a few
consummate men is worth all the world's evil, for it is an

50aP. L. 3.191-3.
51Christ. Doct.
1.4, pp. 66-8.
52
Christ. Doct. 1.33, p. 483.
53P. P. 1.147.

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 The Problem of Evil in Paradise Lost 193

affirmation of the truth that by nature every man is funda

mentally good, "natura bonus et sanctus,"54 and through suffer

ing and conflict can attain not merely the original perfection of
his nature, but a still higher stage proportionate to his struggle.
The great assertion of the perfectibility of man is Jesus, whose
manhood showed how the race could rise superior to the attacks
of evil, and "regain the blissful seat."
The poet's scheme for Paradise Lost is not a scholastic theol
ogy. On the contrary, he desires to represent the world simply
and truly, to express a faith that sees and is not overwhelmedj
His theology is as simple as he can make it, as in the treatise
On Christian Doctrine he endeavored to refrain from subtlety,
and present only what is justified by good sense; of the mysteries
of theologians who would presume to "confine th' interminable,"
he prefers to remain "wisely ignorarit." And the modicum of
theology satisfactory to himself he does not wish to force on
others.

What applies to his basis of belief in his theological trea

tise naturally applies still more to his poem. In Paradise
Lost Milton seeks not to prove, but to assert; not to argue, but
to picture. Hence he does not ask the reader to accept his
theology, and does not expect his work to present the consis
tency of a rational system, but does hope to represent the truth
about the world. He does not wish the reader to take literally
his account of Satan, but he does wish to make Satan a personi
fication of evil not out of accord with Scripture or common
belief. And likewise in his representation of the Almighty he did
not expect to be received as a theologian. He did not hold
that the "literal and figurative descriptions of God" in the
Bible itself exhibited God "as he really is," but granted that
he was of "in such a manner as may be^within the scope
spoken
of our comprehensions,"55 and thought we 'rmust apply to God
a phraseology borrowed from our own
under habits and
standing."56 Hence Milton does not expect his reader to believe
any of the descriptions of God in Paradise Lost, for they are but
attempts to render in a figure what cannot receive definite

64
Christ. Doct. 1.10.
65
Christ. Doct. 1.2, pp. 16-17.
56
Christ. Doct. 1.3, p. 39.

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 194 Gilbert

form. Man was created in the image of God not in physique,

but in

Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure.57

Milton felt that his scheme was justified theologically,

Biblically, and poetically, in that it gave the truth about life.
The whole poem is the work of a man of high courage who was
willing to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling,
and who expected to bear the penalty of his own mistakes and
those of other men. A reader who feels that a God who offers
man only a fair chance is not a God of love does not agree with
Milton, who is willing to see infinite goodness in the assurance
that faith is well-founded. Yet the man of spirit will derive
stimulus from the contemplation of a mythical world represent
ing a real world in which victory, though not easy, is possible
to him who will endure the toil of conflict, overcoming the
strong things of the world with those that are weak. Milton
was no effort to construct a but was
making pleasant theology,
to assert that man's burdens are not more than he
endeavoring
can bear, for faith is founded on a rock; death, the grim terror,
is swallowed up in victory, and becomes the gate of a better life;
the wrath of man serves the goodness of God; and though sin
abounds, grace yet more abounds.
terribly
Allan H. Gilbert

Trinity College, North Carolina

57P. Z. 4.293.

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