Evil people are far more sad when they miss punishment, than when they are justly corrected. It is clear that evil people should be punished, and unequal that they should get-away punishment. Boethius asks how evil can occur in a world formed by God, but lady Philosophy debates that there is no reasoning that evil still exists. People make wicked things because they wish some utility in them, but God gave us independent will. God does not have the force to do wickedness, people do. In this cognition, the wicked lose their human kind for evil and they have dropped to the grade of beasts. But this procures, in Book IV, to a clear request: If the universe is dominated by the good and all things demand the good, why are some people wicked, and furthermore, why do evil people so often appear to succeed while the good torture?

Philosophy’s responses are strange. First she debates that the wicked are indeed weaker than the virtuous, since all people demand the good and therefore the wicked fail to attain that which they attain after, while the virtuous succeed. She then debates that the wicked are sad, since she has already demonstrated that welfare is the good and the wicked miss to win the good, and so fail to attain happiness. Finally, Philosophy manifests that the wicked do in fact receive forfeit in this life by making the wickedness that they set out to make, which is a pain in itself. And because good people make virtue, they become even more pure , which is in itself a reward. Actually, if happiness is the ultimate good that all men demand, what other things would there be?

Men who are wicked cannot gain the definitive goal. Wickedness is the deficiency of power to make good, therefore the wicked are depressed. The forfeit of wicked people is only therefore valid, so they are still cured with some medicines. If a wicked person bypasses forfeit, he will be not as lucky as one who is disciplined because he is at minimum receiving good. Evil is an illness of the body and the brain—thus far, we should sympathize with evil people. If the wicked are disciplined, it is useful because they have an opportunity to clean themselves from that pollution and changing their actions. When they get rid of forfeit, the probability of their evil increases. But Boethius doesn't discover this line of logic persuasive. He still discovers that there is some goodness in the mercy of fate. Clearly, there appears to be some wickedness in the reality that good men can be depressed by the wicked. Some wicked acts of wicked men are permitted to reach to fruition. And so, for the rest of Book IV, Philosophy picks a completely distinct route in arguing for godly providence.

She differentiates between “fate” and “providence”, where providence is a plain unity in God’s brain and fate is the diverse outworking of providence in the universe. Philosophy utilizes this difference to demonstrate that providence is beyond the capacity of individual beings to recognize, basically saying that there is a definitive outline behind anything even if we can’t sight what it is. But she also creates several trials at explication for why bad things occur to good people. In some situations, for example, evil things occur to the virtuous to examine their virtue and patience, or to support them. On the contrary, the wicked are occasionally permitted to succeed in order to restrict them from even greater evil, or to award them the capability to discipline other wicked people, or even to fetch them to the final destruction.