The conflict between good and evil is a common theme running through the great literature and drama of the world, from the time of ancient Greeks to the present. The principle that conflict is the heart of dramatic action when illustrated by concrete examples, almost always turns up some aspects of the struggle between good and evil. The idea that there is neither good nor evil--in any absolute moral or religious sense—is widespread in our times. There are various relativistic and behaviorist standards of ethics. If these standards even admit the distinction between good and evil, it is as a relative matter and not as whirlwind of choices that lies at the center of living. In any such state of mind, conflict can at best, be only a petty matter, lacking true university. The acts of the evildoer and of the virtuous man alike become dramatically neutralized. Imagine the reduced effect of Crime and Punishment or the Brothers Karamazoc had Dostoevsky thought that good and evil, as portrayed in those books, were wholly relative, and that he had had no conviction about them. You can't have a vital literature if you ignore or shun evil. What you get then is the world of Pollyanna, goody-goody in place of the good. Cry, The Beloved Country is a great and dramatic novel because Alan Paton, in addition to being a skilled workman, sees with clear eyes both good and evil, differentiates them, pitches them into conflict with each other, and takes sides. He sees that the native boy Absalom Kumalo, who has murdered, cannot be judged justly without taking into account the environment that has had a part in shaping him. But Paton sees, too, that Absalom the individual, not society the abstraction, committed the act and is responsible for it. Mr. Paton understands mercy. He knows that this precious thing is not evoked by sentimental impulse, but by a searching examination of the realities of human action. Mercy follows a judgment it does not precede it. One of the novels by the talented Paul Bowles, Let It Down is full of motion, full of sensational depravities, and is a crashing bore. The book recognizes no good, admits no evil, and is coldly indifferent to the moral behavior. of its characters. It is a long shrug. Such a view of life is non-dramatic and negates the vital essence of drama. In our age, according to the author, a standpoint often taken in the area of ethics is the ______.