 There is a broader sense of “understand” or “explain”, however, in which such evil is no mystery at all: it is the most depressingly familiar thing in the world. Everyday immoral agents presumably see what they are doing under the aspect of some good or other—good for their company, good for their bonuses, good for their reelection efforts—even if they also know that what they are doing is ultimately wrong. If we interpret the war cry of Milton’s Satan—“Evil be thou my good!” (1667, Paradise Lost, Bk IV, line 110)—as implying that he is taking evil under the guise of the good, then it is not absurd. But it is still not wholly intelligible, either.