In its systematical variety, it is an
abstract way of conceiving things as good. Every abstract way of
conceiving things selects some one aspect of them as their
essence for the time being, and disregards the other aspects.
Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential
and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from
its field of vision; and although, when thus nakedly stated, this
might seem a difficult feat to perform for one who is
intellectually sincere with himself and honest about facts, a
little reflection shows that the situation is too complex to lie
open to so simple a criticism.
In the first place, happiness, like every other emotional state,
has blindness and insensibility to opposing facts given it as its
instinctive weapon for self-protection against disturbance. When
happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no
more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can
gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy,
from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be
believed in. He must ignore it; and to the bystander he may then
seem perversely to shut his eyes to it and hush it up.
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