Thus, the creation and bringing into existence of evils, harms, tribulations, satans, and harmful things, is not evil and bad, for they are created for the many important results they yield. For example, satans have not been set to pester the angels, and the angels cannot progress; their degrees are fixed and deficient. However, in the world of humanity the degrees of progress and decline are infinite. There is an extremely long distance through which to progress, from the Nimrod’s and Pharaoh’s as far as the veracious saints and the prophets.

Thus, because of the creation of satans and the mystery of man’s accountability and the sending of prophets, an arena of trial and examination and striving and competition has been opened so that coal-like base spirits may be differentiated and separated out from diamond-like elevated spirits. If there had been no striving and competition,  the potentialities  in the  mine of humanity,  resembling  diamonds  and coal, would have remained equal. The spirit of Abu Bakr the Veracious at the highest of the high would have remained on a par with Abu Jahl at the lowest of the low. This means that since the creation of satans and evils looks to vast, universal results, it is not  evil  or  bad.  The  evils  and  instances  of  bad  that  arise  from  abuses  and  the particular causes known as man’s acquisition pertain to his voluntary actions not to divine creation.

I f   y o u   a s k ?   The majority of humanity become unbelievers  due to the existence of Satan; they embrace unbelief and suffer harm, despite the sending of prophets. If, according to the rule “The majority has the word,” the majority suffers evil as a result,  then the creation of evil is evil and it may even be said  that the sending of prophets is not a mercy. Isn’t that so?

T h e  A n s w e r : Quantity has no importance in relation to quality. The true majority looks to quality. For example, if a date-palm has a hundred seeds and they are not planted in the earth and watered and so do not undergo a chemical reaction and  manifest  the  struggle  for  life,  they  remain  a  hundred  seeds  worth  virtually nothing.  But if they are watered  and are subject  to the struggle  for life, and then eighty out of the hundred rot due to their faulty make-up, but twenty become fruit- bearing trees, can you say that watering them was evil because most of them rotted? Of course you cannot say that, for the twenty have become twenty thousand. A person who loses eighty and gains twenty thousand suffers no loss, so it cannot be evil.