alone. And this, we may say paradoxically, has its being in not-being.
For the genesis of moral evil is simply the privation of being.[41]
That which, properly speaking, exists, is the nature of the good." The
Divine nature, in other words, is that which excludes nothing, and
contradicts nothing, except those attributes which are contrary to the
nature of reality; it is that which harmonises everything except
discord, which loves everything except hatred, verifies everything
except falsehood, and beautifies everything except ugliness. Thus that
which falls outside the notion of God, proves on examination to be
not merely unreal, but unreality as such. But the relation of evil to
the Absolute is not a religious problem. To our experience, evil
exists as a positive force not subject to the law of God, though
constantly overruled and made an instrument of good. On this subject
we must say more later. Here I need only add that a sunny confidence
in the ultimate triumph of good shines from the writings of most of
the mystics, especially, I think, in our own countrymen. The Cambridge
Platonists are all optimistic; and in the beautiful but little known
_Revelations_ of Juliana of Norwich, we find in page after page the
refrain of "All shall be well." "Sin is behovable,[42] but all shall
be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Since the universe is the thought and will of God expressed under the
forms of time and space, everything in it reflects the nature of its
Creator, though in different degrees. Erigena says finely, "Every
visible and invisible creature is a theophany or appearance of God."
The purest mirror in the world is the highest of created things--the
human soul unclouded by sin. And this brings us to a point at which
Mysticism falls asunder into two classes.

The question which divides them is this--In the higher stages of the