Good and Evil

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned..It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped 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.

Milton - Areopagitica

John Milton, published the Areopagitica in 1644 as an appeal to Parliament to rescind their Licensing Order of June 16th, 1643. This order was designed to bring publishing under government control by creating a number of official censors to whom authors would submit their work for approval prior to having it published. Milton's argument, in brief, was that pre-censorship of authors was little more than an excuse for state control of thought. Recognizing that some means of accountability was necessary to ensure that libellous or other illegal works were kept under control, Milton felt this could be achieved by ensuring the legal responsibility of printers and authors for the content of what they published.

In 2006 a vortex of violence spreads round the world as Muslims protest the publication of a series of cartoons originating in Denmark, each of which depicts the prophet Mohammed in various and universally unflattering situations. The creators and publishers of the cartoons brandish freedom of the press as their shield against the fury of the Muslim street. Peace loving Muslims are left to deplore both the lack of judgment on the part of the press, and the violence of fanatics and the unthinking crowds they use as their weapons in the war aimed at fomenting anarchy and chaos, out of the rubble of which they hope to build a Muslim hegemony.

Christians and Jews join the peace loving Muslims in their condemnation, sadly reminding the world that their own faiths are regularly ridiculed and savaged by the same evildoers who are unable to discern the “cunning resemblances” between good and evil Milton wrote about 360 years ago.

The name of Christ is regularly used in vain on stage and screen and in every day social intercourse without any thought given to how savage it sounds to the ear of a believer. Fiction poses as historical research in popular novels like The Da Vinci Code, propagating blasphemy with merry impunity.

"I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand" says a character in one of Tom Stoppard’s plays, bitingly ironic as always. It is enough to make one weep and to wonder if Milton were alive today, whether he would have as much confidence in the ability of the press to self-regulate.

As one ages there is an ongoing struggle between apathy, impatience and rage brought about by the state of the world. D.J. Enright in Interplay, his brilliant collection of anectodes, aphorisms and literary cornucopia, cites Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India as giving a good account of the apathy and impatience of age:

She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time – the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved.

Enright mused thus: "For all that is said about the sourness of old age, the malevolence, you would like the world to be a better place to leave, to leave with some sort of blessing. So, if it seems to be getting worse, you won’t want to linger."

For all his acerbic wit, Enright was a hopeful and faithful believer right up to his death, and a great inspiration and model for lovers of language and of life. My sense is he would have been able to show the stupidity and wickedness of both the decision to publish the blasphemous cartoons, and of the bloodthirsty reaction to it.

Enright is gone, but his words survive, including this poem entitled Decline of Theodicy

A God supreme and immanent
Flickers feebly among the leaves.

A God whom we cannot blame
Because he left it all to us.

A God whom we cannot praise
Since he left it to us to do.

A God who spoke through his vicars
Whose vicars speak of other things.

A God who appointed our rulers
The rulers who disappoint us

A God whom we cannot fear
Now hell has been annulled.

A God whom we cannot love
Since heaven has been shut down

A God whose name was not taken in vain
A God whose name is not taken.

A God who was a jealous God
Sees nothing to be jealous of.

A God who gave us life
Who now only buries us.