In a story by Arthur Machen entitled "The White People," one of the principal characters, a recluse named Ambrose, discusses what he believes evil is. According to Ambrose, Evil has little in common with what we normally call evil. Murderers and pickpockets and the like normally commit their crimes because they lack something, because they are undeveloped. But Ambrose holds that Evil "is wholly positive--only it is on the wrong side." (Watts, 149) He considers true Evil to be a kind of greatness, on a par with sainthood and genius. He describes Evil as "a lonely thing, a passion of the solitary, individual soul." (Watts, 149) Ambrose speaks of sin and Evil interchangeably and says, "sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in making this effort man becomes a demon." (Watts, 151) He also says, "The saint endeavors to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall."

The story comes from a book entitled Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. So we can assume that Machen is more interested in frightening his reader than he is in presenting the true nature of evil. Machen doesn't give a philosophical analysis of evil in his story. Rather, he paints a picture that is supposed to send chills down our spine. There is much that is left unsaid. Ambrose does not indicate what it is that the Evil person has a passion for, and he does not really indicate what the sinner is trying to obtain. He does say that it is ecstasy and knowledge that only angels have, but he doesn't go any further in hinting at what this might be.

What I read of the story was an excerpt that Alan Watts included in The Two Hands of God. Watts points out that the story would cease to horrify us if we could understand the Evil person that Ambrose gives us glimpses of. The horror we feel is created in part by our wonder. But it not my purpose to excite wonder and horror. I want to get at what it is to be evil, and to that end I am going to dwell on Ambrose's account and try to fill in the blanks.

The first thing we may notice about Ambrose's account is that it is rooted in theism. Ambrose presupposes that there is knowledge which God has set off limits to humans. The Evil person, according to Ambrose, seeks after this knowledge. As Ambrose says, the Evil person repeats the Fall. Thus, the Fall is a paradigm example of Evil for Ambrose. In Genesis God forbade Adam and Eve from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent told Eve that she would become like God if she ate of it. So when Eve ate the forbidden fruit, she was seeking forbidden knowledge and trying to become like God. That is the essence of Evil for Ambrose.

Let's consider further what kind of theology has to be true for Eve's action to be the essence of Evil. According to this theology, there is knowledge that God doesn't want us to have and it is evil to seek this forbidden knowledge. The question remains, why is it evil to seek this knowledge?

One answer is that it is just wrong to disobey God. If God doesn't want us to do something, it is just wrong to do it. Criticisms of the Divine Command Theory aside, this would explain why it is wrong to seek forbidden knowledge. But it would not explain Ambrose's contention that it is only the seekers of forbidden knowledge who are evil and not other wrongdoers. Given what Ambrose believes, our answer has to explain not only why seeking forbidden knowledge is wrong but also why it is evil and many other types of wrongdoing are not evil. Then, of course, criticisms of the Divine Command Theory also make this answer unsatisfactory. So we need a different answer.

Ambrose tells us that the Evil person seeks knowledge that God has given to the angels but not to man. This tells us that it is not wrong merely to have this knowledge. The angels have not been made into sinners for having this knowledge. What is wrong is for man to have this knowledge, whatever it may be. So there is presumably some relevent difference between men and angels that makes it wrong for men to have this knowledge.

One possible reason may be that it is dangerous for men to have this knowledge. Perhaps it is the knowledge to shape reality, the sort of knowledge that the sorcerer seeks. At the beginning of the excerpt that Watts quotes, Ambrose says, "Sorcery and sanctity, these are the only realities. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life." (Watts, 147) Since sanctity belongs to the saint, it must be that Ambrose considers sorcery to be the proclivity of the sinner. So Ambrose's paradigm for the Evil person seems to be the sorcerer, the alchemist, and perhaps even the philosopher.

These are all people who seek knowledge that may be forbidden by God, assuming of course, that God exists and does forbid some knowledge. The sorcerer wants the knowledge to do the things that God does, such as create life, change the weather, etc. The alchemist seeks the knowledge to change one substance into another. The Philosopher seeks knowledge of God, of good and evil (which is the knowledge Eve sought), and of other secrets that God may want hidden from us. We might also add the scientist to this role call. The scientist seeks to know the very nature of the universe, to unlock the secrets to how things really work. In our day, it may even be argued that scientists have in fact stumbled upon forbidden knowledge. Knowledge of the atom has made nuclear weapons possible, and these have made the immanent and total destruction of mankind a real possibility.

I am not convinced, however, that Ambrose considers the search for forbidden knowledge evil because it is dangerous for men to have. He does not assert that evil men are more dangerous than other men. He even asserts that an Evil man might commit no crime. He says, "And as one may give all one's goods to the poor, and yet lack charity; so, remember, one may avoid every crime and yet remain a sinner." (Watts, 153) So I suspect he has another reason for considering the seeker after forbidden knowledge evil.

He gives clues to what this reason may be when gives examples to illustrate the sort of horror we would feel upon recognizing an Evil person. He talks about cats and dogs speaking like humans and of roses in a garden singing songs. These are not dangerous things. In fact, Lassie might save more lives if she could talk. What characterizes them is their unnaturalness. There has been a belief current in theological circles that there is a natural order to things. God, they believe, has created a natural order, and anything which violates this natural order is unnatural. Humans, at least according to Thomas Aquinas, have the ability to discern this order with reason, and this gives them the ability to choose to abide by it or to consciously violate it. I believe Ambrose's understanding of an Evil person is rooted in this idea of a natural order.

According to Aquinas, it is wrong to consciously violate the natural order. In seeking forbidden knowledge, the Evil person seeks to overturn the natural order. Ambrose echoes this idea when he asserts that the essence of sin is "In the taking of heaven by storm." (Watts, 150) He goes on to say, "It appears to me that it is simply an attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner." (Watts, 150) He is then asked if there is "something profoundly unnatural about sin," and his answer is "Exactly." (Watts, 151) So I believe his understanding of the Evil person is rooted in a belief in a natural order.

Of course, Ambrose is not saying that Evil is merely the violation of the natural order. Murderers, thieves, and other ordinary sinners are not necessarily Evil for Ambrose, and he thinks they usually aren't Evil. Yet, given the natural order view of things, they are violating the natural order. What distinguishes the Evil person is his desire to overturn the natural order. In Paradise Lost, Lucifer wanted God's throne. In Genesis, Eve wanted to be like God. Each one of them wanted to usurp God's authority over their lives.

Now that I've revealed that Ambrose's understanding of the Evil person is rooted in his belief in a natural order, it is time to explain the natural order theory in more detail. According to this theory, God has created the universe with value built into it. We can recognize the value that God has built into the world by using our reason. One feature of the theory is that God has arranged things in a particular order, and it is good that things remain in the order that God put them in. In this natural order of things, God is at the top, and he is the sovereign of the universe. To attempt to usurp God's sovereignty is to attempt to overturn the natural order and to turn good into evil.

Ambrose notes that the Evil person hates the good. This is because he identifies good with the natural order of things, and the Evil person seeks to change this order. It is now time to evaluate the belief that an Evil person is someone who seeks to overturn the natural order of things.

Perhaps the biggest underpinning of this theory is theism. If God does not exist, it seems that the theory collapses. It is certainly true that Ambrose's understanding of the natural order theory involves God. But the natural order theory is not nearly as dependent on theism as the Divine Command Theory is. The natural order theory does have its origin in theism, and people who hold it typically root it in theism, but it is logically independent of theism. This is because you can believe in a natural order without believing that God created it. You can believe in a natural order that just is and always has been.

However, the natural order theory does lose plausibility if we assume that God does not exist. For starters, the atheist does not believe that anyone actually ordered the universe. Although the universe manifests various regularities, there is little reason, outside of the belief in a creator, to believe that these regularities are all part of a larger order that encompasses the whole universe. Furthermore, the natural order theory holds that the moral law is part of the natural order.

This belief seems to confuse two understandings of law. There are natural laws, which are really just measurable regularities, and there are the laws people legislate. The former cannot be broken, but the latter can. For example, it is impossible for me to break the law of gravity. Someone who flies in an airplane is not violating the law of gravity. She is simply making use of natural laws, including the law of gravity, to fly through the air. But I can break a law against killing people. This is because natural law does not prevent me from killing people. The law of the United States prohibits me from killing people, but it is in no way analogous to laws of nature.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is an uncreated natural order. Is there any way that someone could overturn it? No one could overturn it by violating natural laws, because that is impossible. No one could overturn it by violating the moral law, because the moral law would still remain in place. The moral law is, presumably, an abstract thing like the truths of mathematics. We can't overturn the truths of mathematics by denying that 1+1=2, and we can't overturn an abstract moral law by not accepting it. What remains to be overturned is a natural hierarchy of things, if indeed such a hierarchy is part of the natural order.

Let's assume that there is a natural hierarchy. This is either something that people naturally fall into, or it is something that people have to discover through reason and set into place. I presume that there is no hierarchy that people naturally fall into. It is indeed true that some people are all too willing to follow someone who assumes a position of leadership. But this doesn't testify to the existence of a natural order. It just shows that some people like to be led and others like to take advantage of this situation. There are also people who resist the leaders of the masses. If there were a natural order, I presume these people would at least recognize to themselves that some of the leaders of the masses ought to be their leaders as well. But, speaking as one of them, I don't recognize any of the popular leaders to be my rightful leader.

If the natural hierarchy is something to be discerned through reason, there ought to be sound, known, and fairly undisputed arguments in favor of the true natural hierarchy of things. But there are none. We have a world in which such theories as Communism, National Socialism, Christian Theocracy, Muslim Theocracy, Democracy, and Fascism all compete with each other and with other theories. Every theory on what the natural hierarchy should be is either disputed by large groups of people or is largely unknown. So I conclude that there really isn't a natural hierarchy to the universe.

Therefore, given the assumption that God does not exist, as well as the assumption that there is a natural order of some sort, I don't believe the natural order is anything that anyone is incapable of overturning. People might try, but they will inevitably fail. Furthermore, if God does not exist, there is much less reason to think that the natural order is good. If the natural order is not good, then a person is not Evil for hating the natural order. So, under the assumption that God does not exist, a person who sought to overturn the natural order would not have to be an Evil person.

Yet another problem that atheism opens up for the natural order theory is the possibility that there is no natural order at all. In an article entitled "Evolution, Christians, and Setians," Philip Marsh explains how entropy has been responsible for everything from the big bang to the formation of stars and planets to the evolution of life on Earth. Right now I will but sketch his claims, which unfortunately doesn't do them justice. Entropy is the breakdown of order. The idea is that the universe was highly ordered before the big bang. That order broke down somewhat and the big bang resulted. Other breakdowns in order brought about various natural laws that didn't exist before. Evolution itself works by weeding out the most successful changes from a slew of chaotic changes. Thus the world around us and our own presence in the world can be attributed to the breakdown of order rather than to design or some sort of natural order.

So, if God does not exist, there is really no good reason for accepting Ambrose's understanding of an Evil person. Let's now consider how his understanding of an Evil person fares under the assumption that God does exist. The theistic version of the natural order theory holds that God made the natural order and that the natural order is good. One problem that this theory faces is a version of a problem that the Divine Command Theory faces.

Here is the problem. Is the natural order good merely because God made it or because God knew what was good and purposely made the natural order good? If we assume the former, then all it means to say that something is good is to say that God made it that way. On this view, the claim that God is good loses its content, because all it means is that God is God. So this first option is unacceptable. If we assume the latter, then the natural order can't be used to define good or evil. This is because good and evil are already something that God knows before creating the natural order. Therefore, an Evil person is not defined as someone who opposes the natural order. Rather, all that distinguishes an Evil person is hatred of the good.

Although Machen uses the idea of opposing the natural order to frighten his readers, it seems that Ambrose's conception of an Evil person boils down to someone who hates the good. Ambrose does in fact say that we sometimes recognize evil by its hatred of the good. (Watts, 151-2) So he does admit that the Evil person hates the good. It seems that his talk about storming heaven and seeking forbidden knowledge are all just consequences of his theology given his understanding of evil. We may reject his theology and distill his understanding of an evil person to someone who hates what is good.

The question now arises, does anyone hate the good? And another question arises, is this what makes someone evil? To answer either of these questions, we need to know what it is to hate the good. First of all, something could be good, and someone could hate it. For example, it is good for the Hoos to sing and be happy, and the Grinch hates this. Dr. Suess's Grinch is a fictional example, of course, but there are probably many real Grinches. But The Grinch Who Stole Christmas does not provide us with an example of someone who hates what it is good because it is good. Rather, the Grinch envies the Hoos. The Grinch doesn't live a happy life, and he feels that no one should be happy if he can't be happy. But the Grinch really does value happiness. He recognizes happiness to be good and does not hate it as such. What motivates the Grinch to destroy the Hoos' happiness is the belief that he can't know happiness himself, not a hatred of happiness. This is revealed on Christmas morning when the Hoos are all singing songs of joy even though the Grinch has stolen all their Christmas trees, Christmas stockings, and Christmas presents. The Grinch hears their singing and learns that he could not destroy their happiness. This gives him the hope that he can know happiness too. So his heart grows three times larger, as Dr. Suess puts it, and he goes down to join the Hoos in their Christmas celebration. What the Grinch felt is common, but it is not truly hatred of the good. Rather it is hatred of something which happens to be good.

So the question remains, does anyone hate the good? I find this hard to conceive, because I presume that everyone values his own good. If anyone hated the good because it is good, he would also hate his own good because it is good. I suppose some people do hate themselves and even engage in self-destructive activity, but I believe this results from ignorance in some cases and from self-condemnation in some cases, but not from genuine ill will toward oneself. When someone does hate something that is good, I believe it is generally out of love for something else that is good. For example, an envious person may hate for good things to happen to others, because that leads him to make a comparison between himself and those others, and that diminishes his self-esteem. Or someone may hate for good things to happen to his enemies, because that may make it easier for his enemies to hurt him. But I find it really hard to conceive that anyone hates what is good just because it is good. That is a perversity I cannot comprehend. That gives me good reason to presume that it doesn't happen, though perhaps I am wrong.

Since I don't believe that anyone hates the good because it is good, I reject this as a suitable definition of an evil person. As I pointed out, the idea of overturning the natural order or seeking forbidden knowledge doesn't do us much service in defining evil. Therefore, I conclude that Machen's character Ambrose is not working with an adequate understanding of an Evil person.

Fergus Duniho / duniho@www.ling.rochester.edu