Nor can the ethical corollaries of such a view be tolerated for a
moment. That sin is an absolute, eternal, in some sense, irreparable
evil is a conception altogether fundamental to that morality with which
Christianity and modern civilization have identified themselves. It is
but another aspect of the doctrine of freedom and responsibility. Of
physical and necessary evil it is possible to assert the merely negative
or relative character; we can view it as the good in process of making;
or as the good imperfectly comprehended; but if this optimism be
extended to sin it can only be because sin is regarded as necessitated,
_i.e._, as no longer sin. Hence the view in question does not account
for, but implicitly denies the existence of sin.
Furthermore, the whole tendency of more recent idealism is to explain
moral evil as an offence against man's social nature by which he is a
member of an organism or community. It is the undue self-assertion of
the part against the interests of the whole. Of course the idealist
explains this organic conception with a respect for personality which is
absent from socialistic and evolutionary doctrines of society.
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