By the experience, roots of good and evil go down to the depth of a
human’s moral core. On the one hand, the wish to learn the truth and rethink
one’s own life from the moral viewpoint is natural. Things that are good
attract man. He has inherent compassion toward other people and living
creatures in general. A product of this emotion is his desire to help, protect,
or save. Man feels moral satisfaction when he pleases others, loves, forgives,
gives up his own interests, or fulfills an obligation of a member of his family
or community. By doing good, man develops positive
qualities of his soul: intelligence, will power, consistency, courage,
tolerance. In a word, he gains nobility of spirit.
On the other hand, from the earliest age
of man’s life, tendencies opposed to those listed above start to manifest themselves.
At times, man does consciously wish to hurt a neighbor. He can offend, lie,
defame, harm, injure, or deprive another of his life. Sometimes man can do this
for personal advantage, and sometimes for no obvious reason, as though he were
taking pleasure in evil. If man does not constrain his bad tendencies, then as
time passes, he becomes bad himself: greedy, insatiable, rude, impudent, lying,
hypocritical, insidious, brutal, stuck-up, depraved.
After the repetition of transgressions, the evil, which was initially a mere
predisposition for violation of the moral law, becomes a sinful habit, a vice,
and weaves itself into the spiritual nature of man, making him bad morally. The
inclination toward evil is like a buckle on cardboard: it makes a sheet defective,
because cardboard always folds along it. Science cannot explain why good
tendencies coexist with bad ambitions. The Bible’s explanation for this is
original sin.
As good makes man nobler, so evil
cripples him. It darkens intelligence, weakens will, perverts
taste. In a while, man’s moral condition starts to alter his appearance. A
morally degraded person can be recognized merely from his looks.