Herman Melville and the Problem of Evil

82            Public Lectures

suits. The pessimist asks: What is the ultimate nature of this
evil and miserable world, and is there any way out of this
woe? The optimist: Why should this fundamentally good
and perfect world include any evil, and how can we acquiesce
in it loyally and wholeheartedly?”¹ This, then, is the basic
problem, one which every philosophical system, every the-
ology must sooner or later face. I am aware, of course, that
there are many problems of evil, not merely the problem;
here I use the term for the whole complex of issues raised by
a consideration of the source and nature of evil.

It is a serious problem. If one’s sole interest in life is
essentially frivolous—that is, if he is concerned only with
collecting material things, to the neglect of the things that
do not rust—if one is essentially frivolous, he can go through
life without meeting the problem of evil. But if one has the
intellectual curiosity to ask why about the more permanent
things in human life, he eventually meets the problem of
evil. Herman Melville did, and he wrestled with it for half a
century.

Melville was born in New York in 1819, the son of Alan
Melville, a fairly well-to-do importer, and Maria Gansevoort,
of Dutch patroon stock. With his early life, we have no
concern here, except to note that he was indoctrinated with
the Dutch Reformed brand of Calvinism. After his father’s
death and the collapse of his business reduced the family to
near-poverty, young Herman drifted into various unpro-
ductive occupations. Finally at seventeen he shipped before
the mast on a merchantman for Liverpool. One voyage was
enough to disillusion him with forecastle life and to give him
a first-hand acquaintance with the dockside slums and the
human suffering and cruelty that they harbored. Three
years of drifting followed; then again he took to sea, this

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