A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

UNITY IN DIVERSITY. 237~tinjured neither sensation comes to us. If a certain nerveis paralysed, we do not get the pleasurable feelings thatand at the same time we doused to come along that wire,not get the painful feelings either. They are never twobut the same. Again, the same thing produces pleasureand pain at different times of life. The same phenomenonwill produce pleasure in one, and pain to another. Theeating of meat produces pleasure to the man, but painto the animal which isbeing eaten. There has never beenanything which has pleased everyone alike. Some arepleased, others displeased. So on it will go. Therefore,on the face of this it, duality of existence is denied, andwhat follows from this ? I told you in my last lecture thatwe can never ultimately have everything good on thisearth and nothing bad. It may have disappointed andfrightened some. But I cannot help it and I am open toconviction when I am shown the contrary ;but until thatcan be proved to me, and I can find that it is true, I cannotsay so.The general argument against my statement andapparently a very convincing one is this, that in the courseof evolution, all that is evil in what we see around us isgradually being eliminated, and the result is that if thiselimination continues after millions of years, a time willcome when all the evil will have been extirpated, and thegood alone will remain. This is apparently a very soundargument, would to God it were true; but there is a fallacy,,and it is this, that it takes for granted that good and evilboth are quantities that are eternally fixed. It takes forgranted that there is a definite mass of evil which may berepresented by 100, and likewise of good, and that thismass of evil isbeing diminished everyday, and only thegood remaining. But ^sit so ? The history of the world