This was one of the most radical philosophical claims in the address — and one that aligned Emerson with a long tradition stretching back to Augustine and Plotinus. Evil, he argued, had no independent existence; it was simply the absence of good, just as cold was the absence of heat and darkness the absence of light. Only goodness was real, positive, substantive. The practical implication was staggering: evil was literally nothing. Every act of cruelty, every corruption, every betrayal was not the addition of something bad but the subtraction of something good. 'Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power... he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death.' This was Emerson's answer to the problem of evil — not denial of suffering, but a metaphysical claim that suffering was a deficit, not a substance.