But for us, Russian Social Democrats, there can be no doubt that, from the point of view of the working-classes and of the toiling masses of all the Russian peoples, the lesser evil would be a defeat of the Tsarist monarchy.
The mutual slaughter of barbarians in the Levant seemed, even to George Canning, a lesser evil than a renewed Armageddon in Europe; and all the resources of diplomacy were set in motion to heal the rupture between Turkey and Russia.
Yet it seems plain that he considered Sabellianizing reduction of the Divine Persons to phases or modes in the unity a lesser evil than regarding the Logos (with Arius) as a creature, however dignified.
It¹s not about the triumph of good over evil, it¹s about whether you can use a lesser evil to avoid a greater.
Some of these admit of a purely egoistic application, and appear to be so understood by the author - as (e.g.) that goods differ in quality as well as in duration, and that the superior good or the lesser evil is always to be preferred; that absence of a given amount of good is preferable to the presence of equivalent evil; that future good or evil is to be regarded as much as present, if equally certain, and nearly as much if very probable.
