“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” — Simone Weil

Simone Weil’s keen distinction between the “imaginary” and “real” is an antidote to our penchant for glamorous constructs. She delineates “imaginary evil” as rich, appealing, and riddled with variety—the captivating beast of stories and daydreams. This evil thrives on our fascination with shadows, adorned in the romantic masks of villainy. By contrast, real evil is an experience absent of drama: heavy, repetitive, and strangely devoid of color. It lacks spectacle and merely persists—a quiet yet weighty load, like stone, in the heart.

In a similar vein, Weil notes that imaginary good shares a monotonous quality, but here we sense that it isn’t quite the same tedium as with real evil. Imaginary good feels like a lukewarm echo, an afterthought. By contrast, real good is raw, rich with immediacy, constantly refreshing itself, so that its very nature opposes stagnation. Good, when genuine, bursts out of the ordinary, defying habit and heightening awareness. It is a force, not an affectation, and it never leaves one unmoved.

What is Weil pointing to in this gap between the imagined and the experienced? That in imaginary evil and good alike, the imagination suffices, but the real only begins when imagination’s reach falls short. Imaginary good is tame precisely because it has been scripted, and its direction ends where imagination ends—bounded by perception, it is passive, inert. Real good, however, is dynamic; it unfolds beyond anticipation, much as a sudden bloom may appear in a field of barren winter. The reward of real good is that it is not reducible to the static; it transforms and thereby surprises, hinting at a substance beyond imagination’s closure.

Weil warns us not to dwell in imaginative notions, where even evil seems preferable in its flashy, attractive garb. Imagination itself is ill-prepared for life, at least without first the will to confront a truer experience beyond it.