but if true, what reason can be assigned for it, | culably great, number of objects, upon which it is except the will of the Creator? It may reasona- exercised. bly be asked, Why is any thing a pleasure? and I know no answer which can be returned to the question, but that which refers it to appointment. We can give no account whatever of our pleasures in the simple and original perception; and, even when physical sensations are assumed, we can seldom account for them in the secondary and complicated shapes, in which they take the name of diversions. I never yet met with a sportsman, who could tell me in what the sport consisted; who could resolve it into its principle, and state that principle. I have been a great follower of fishing myself, and in its cheerful solitude have passed some of the happiest hours of a sufficiently happy life; but, to this moment, I could never trace out the source of the pleasure which it afforded me. The "quantum in rebus inane!" whether applied to our amusements or to our graver pursuits (to which, in truth, it sometimes equally belongs,) is always an unjust complaint. If trifles engage, and if trifles make us happy, the true reflection suggested by the experiment, is upon the tendency of nature to gratification and enjoyment, which is, in other words, the goodness of its Author towards his sensitive creation. Rational natures also, as such, exhibit qualities which help to confirm the truth of our position. The degree of understanding found in mankind, is usually much greater than what is necessary for mere preservation. The pleasure of choosing for themselves, and of prosecuting the object of their choice, should seem to be an original source of enjoyment. The pleasures received from things, great, beautiful, or new, from imitation, or from the liberal arts, are, in some measure, not only superadded, but unmixed, gratifications, having no pains to balance them.* I do not know whether our attachment to property be not something more than the mere dictate of reason, or even than the mere effect of association. Property communicates a charm to whatever is the object of it. It is the first of our abstract ideas it cleaves to us the closest and the longest. It endears to the child its plaything, to the peasant his cottage, to the landholder his estate. It supplies the place of prospect and scenery. Instead of coveting the beauty of distant situations, it teaches every man to find it in his own. It gives boldness and grandeur to plains and fens, tinge and colouring to clays and fallows. These Or the ORIGIN OF EVIL, no universal solution has been discovered; I mean, no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint. The most comprehensive is that which arises from the consideration of general rules. We may, I think, without much difficulty, be brought to admit the four following points: first, that important advantages may accrue to the universe from the order of nature proceeding according to general laws: secondly, that general laws, however well set and constituted, often thwart and cross one another: thirdly, that from these thwartings and crossings, frequent particular inconveniences will arise: and fourthly, that it agrees with our observation to suppose, that some degree of these inconveniences takes place in the works of nature. points may be allowed; and it may also be asserted, that the general laws with which we are acquainted, are directed to beneficial ends. On the other hand, with many of these laws we are not acquainted at all, or we are totally unable to trace them in their branches, and in their operation; the effect of which ignorance is, that they cannot be of importance to us as measures by which to regulate our conduct. The conservation of them may be of importance in other respects, or to other beings, but we are uninformed of their value or use; uninformed, consequently, when, and how far, they may or may not be suspended, or their effects turned aside, by a presiding and benevolent will, without incurring greater evils than those which would be avoided. The consideration, therefore, of general laws, although it may concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly (which I think it does,) rests in views disproportionate to our faculties, and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account for the obscurity of the subject, than to supply us with distinct answers to our difficulties. However, whilst we assent to the above-stated propositions as principles, whatever uncertainty we may find in the application, we lay a ground for believing, that cases of apparent evil, for which we can suggest no particular reason, are governed by reasons, which are more general, which lie deeper in the order of second causes, and which on that account are removed to a greater distance from us. The doctrine of imperfections, or, as it is called, of evils of imperfection, furnishes an account, All these considerations come in aid of our founded, like the former, in views of universal second proposition. The reader will now bear in nature. The doctrine is briefly this:-It is promind what our two propositions were. They bable, that creation may be better replenished by were, firstly, that in a vast plurality of instances, sensitive beings of different sorts, than by sensiin which contrivance is perceived, the design of tive beings all of one sort. It is likewise probathe contrivance is beneficial: secondly, that the ble, that it may be better replenished by different Deity has added pleasure to animal sensations orders of beings rising one above another in grabeyond what was necessary for any other pur-dation, than by beings possessed of equal degrees pose; or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain. of perfection. Now, a gradation of such beings implies a gradation of imperfections. No class can justly complain of the imperfections which belong to its place in the scale, unless it were allowable for it to complain, that a scale of being was appointed in nature; for which appointment there appear to be reasons of wisdom and good Whilst these propositions can be maintained, we are authorized to ascribe to the Deity the character of benevolence: and what is benevolence at all, must in him be infinite benevolence, by reason of the infinite, that is to say, the incal-ness. * Balguy on the Divine Benevolence. In like manner, finiteness, or what is resolvable into finiteness, in inanimate subjects, can never be a just subject of complaint; because if it were ever so, it would be always so: we mean, that we can never reasonably demand that things should be larger or more, when the same demand might be made, whatever the quantity or number was. And to me, it seems, that the sense of mankind has so far acquiesced in these reasons, as that we seldom complain of evils of this class, when we clearly perceive them to be such. What I have to add, therefore, is, that we ought not to complain of some other evils, which stand upon the same foot of vindication as evils of confessed imperfection. We never complain, that the globe of our earth is too small: nor should we complain, if it were even much smaller. But where is the difference to us, between a less globe, and part of the present being uninhabitable? The inhabitants of an island may be apt enough to murmur at the sterility of some parts of it, against its rocks, or sands, or swamps; but no one thinks himself authorized to murmur, simply because the island is not larger than it is. Yet these are the same griefs. The above are the two metaphysical answers which have been given to this great question. They are not the worse for being metaphysical, provided they be founded (which I think they are) in right reasoning: but they are of a nature too wide to be brought under our survey, and it is often difficult to apply them in the detail. Our speculations, therefore, are perhaps better employed when they confine themselves within a narrower circle. The observations which follow, are of this more limited, but more determinate, kind. Of bodily pain, the principal observation, no doubt, is that which we have already made, and already dwelt upon, viz. "that it is seldom the object of contrivance; that when it is so, the contrivance rests ultimately in good." has the power of shedding a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which, I believe, few enjoyments exceed. A man resting from a fit of the stone or gout, is, for the time, in possession of feelings which undisturbed health cannot impart. They may be dearly bought, but still they are to be set against the price. And, indeed, it depends upon the duration and urgency of the pain, whether they be dearly bought or not. I am far from being sure, that a man is not a gainer by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily ease for a couple of hours out of the four-and-twenty. Two very common observations favour this opinion: one is, that remissions of pain call forth, from those who experience them, stronger expressions of satisfaction and of gratitude towards both the author and the instruments of their relief, than are excited by advantages of any other kind: the second is, that the spirits of sick men do not sink in proportion to the acuteness of their sufferings; but rather appear to be roused and supported, not by pain, but by the high degree of comfort which they derive from its cessation, or even its subsidency, whenever that occurs; and which they taste with a relish, that diffuses some portion of mental complacency over the whole of that mixed state of sensations in which disease has placed them. In connexion with bodily pain may be considered bodily disease, whether painful or not. Few diseases are fatal. I have before me the account of a dispensary in the neighbourhood, which states six years' experience as follows: Admitted 6420 Cured Dead 5476 And this I suppose nearly to agree with what other similar institutions exhibit. Now, in all these cases, some disorder must have been felt, or the patients would not have applied for a remedy; yet we see how large a proportion of the maladies which were brought forward, have either yielded To which, however, may be added, that the an- to proper treatment, or, what is more probable, nexing of pain to the means of destruction, is a ceased of their own accord. We owe these fresalutary provision; inasmuch as it teaches vigi- quent recoveries, and, where recovery does not lance and caution; both gives notice of danger, take place, this patience of the human constitution and excites those endeavours which may be neces under many of the distempers by which it is visary to preservation. The evil consequence, which sited, to two benefactions of our nature. One is, sometimes arises from the want of that timely in- that she works within certain limits; allows of a timation of danger which pain gives, is known to certain latitude within which health may be prethe inhabitants of cold countries by the example served, and within the confines of which it only of frost-bitten limbs. I have conversed with pa- suffers a graduated diminution. Different quantients who had lost toes and fingers by this cause. tities of food, different degrees of exercise, differThey have in general told me, that they were to-ent portions of sleep, different states of the atmostally unconscious of any local uneasiness at the phere, are compatible with the possession of health. time. Some I have heard declare, that, whilst So likewise it is with the secretions and excrethey were about their employment, neither their tions, with many internal functions of the body, situation, nor the state of the air was unpleasant. and with the state, probably, of most of its inThey felt no pain; they suspected no mischief; ternal organs. They may vary considerably, not till, by the application of warmth, they discovered, only without destroying life, but without occasiontoo late, the fatal injury which some of their ex-ing any high degree of inconveniency. tremities had suffered. I say that this shows the use of pain, and that we stand in need of such a monitor. I believe also that the use extends farther than we suppose, or can now trace; that to disagreeable sensations we, and all animals, owe, or have owed, many habits of action which are salutary, but which are become so familiar, as not easily to be referred to their origin. PAIN also itself is not without its alleviations. It may be violent and frequent; but it is seldom both violent and long-continued: and its pauses and intermissions become positive pleasures. It The other property of our nature to which we are still more beholden, is its constant endeavour to restore itself, when disordered, to its regular course. The fluids of the body appear to possess a power of separating and expelling any noxious substance which may have mixed itself with them. This they do, in eruptive fevers, by a kind of despumation, as Sydenham calls it, analogous in some measure to the intestine action by which fermenting liquors work the yest to the surface. The solids, on their part, when their action is obstructed, not only resume their action, as soon as the ob struction is removed, but they struggle with the | impediment. They take an action as near to the true one, as the difficulty and the disorganization, with which they have to contend, will allow of. Of mortal diseases, the great use is to reconcile us to death. The horror of death proves the value of life. But it is in the power of disease to abate, or even extinguish, this horror: which it does in a wonderful manner, and, oftentimes, by a mild imperceptible gradation. Every man who has been placed in a situation to observe it, is surprised with the change which has been wrought in himself, when he compares the view which he entertains of death upon a sick-bed, with the heart-sinking dismay with which he should some time ago have met it in health. There is no similitude between the sensations of a man led to execution, and the calm expiring of a patient at the close of his disease. Death to him is only the last of a long train of changes; in his progress through which, it is possible that he may experience no shocks or sudden transitions. Death itself, as a mode of removal and of succession, is so connected with the whole order of our animal world, that almost every thing in that world must be changed, to be able to do without it. It may seem likewise impossible to separate the fear of death from the enjoyment of life, or the perception of that fear from rational natures. Brutes are in a great measure delivered from all anxiety on this account by the inferiority of their faculties; or rather they seem to be armed with the apprehension of death just sufficiently to put them upon the means of preservation, and no farther. But would a human being wish to purchase this immunity at the expense of those mental powers which enable him to look forward to the future? Death implies separation: and the loss of those whom we love, must necessarily, so far as we can conceive, be accompanied with pain. To the brute creation, nature seems to have stepped in with some secret provision for their relief, under the rupture of their attachments. In their instincts towards their offspring, and of their off spring, to them, I have often been surprised to observe how ardently they love, and how soon they forget. The pertinacity of human sorrow, (upon which, time also, at length, lays its softening hand,) is probably, therefore, in some manner connected with the qualities of our rational or moral nature. One thing however is clear, viz. that it is better that we should possess affections, the sources of so many virtues, and so many joys, although they be exposed to the incidents of life, as well as the interruptions of mortality, than, by the want of them, be reduced to a state of selfishness, apathy, and quietism. stream of moderate and miscellaneous enjoyments, in which happiness, as distinguished from volup tuousness, consists. Now for rational occupation, which is, in other words, for the very material of contented existence, there would be no place left, if either the things with which we had to do were absolutely impracticable to our endeavours, or if they were too obedient to our uses. A world furnished with advantages on one side, and beset with difficulties, wants, and inconveniences, on the other, is the proper abode of free, rational, and active natures, being the fittest to stimulate and exercise their faculties. The very refractoriness of the objects they have to deal with contributes to this purpose. A world in which nothing depended upon ourselves, however it might have suited an imaginary race of beings, would not have suited mankind. Their skill, prudence, industry; their various arts, and their best attainments, from the application of which they draw, if not their highest, their most permanent gratifications, would be insignificant, if things could be either moulded by our volitions, or, of their own accord, conformed themselves to our views and wishes. Now it is in this refractoriness that we discern the seed and principle of physical evil, as far as it arises from that which is external to us. Civil evils, or the evils of civil life, are much more easily disposed of, than physical evils; because they are, in truth, of much less magnitude, and also because they result, by a kind of necessity, not only from the constitution of our nature, but from a part of that constitution which no one would wish to see altered. The case is this: Mankind will in every country breed up to a certain point of distress. That point may be different in different countries or ages, according to the established usages of life in each. It will also shift upon the scale, so as to admit of a greater or less number of inhabitants, according as the quantity of provision, which is either produced in the country, or supplied to it from other countries, may happen to vary. But there must always be such a point, and the species will always breed up to it. The order of generation proceeds by something like a geometrical progression. The increase of provision, under circumstances even the most advantageous, can only assume the form of an arithmetic series. Whence it follows, that the population will always overtake the provision, will pass beyond the line of plenty, and will continue to increase, till checked by the difficulty of procuring subsistence.* Such difficulty therefore, along with its attendant circumstances, must be found in every old country: and these circumstances constitute what we call poverty, which, necessarily, imposes labour, servitude, restraint. It seems impossible to people a country with inOf other external evils, (still confining ourselves habitants who shall be all easy in circumstances. to what are called physical or natural evils,) a con- For suppose the thing to be done, there would be siderable part come within the scope of the follow-such marrying and giving in marriage amongst ing observation:-The great principle of human satisfaction is engagement. It is a most just distinction, which the late Mr. Tucker has dwelt upon so largely in his works, between pleasures in which we are passive, and pleasures in which we are active. And, I believe, every attentive observer of human life will assent to his position, that, however grateful the sensations may occasionally be in which we are passive, it is not these, but the latter class of our pleasures, which constitute satisfaction; which supply that regular them, as would in a few years change the face of affairs entirely, i. e. as would increase the consumption of those articles, which supplied the natural or habitual wants of the country, to such a degree of scarcity, as must leave the greatest part of the inhabitants unable to procure them without toilsome endeavours, or, out of the different kinds of these articles, to procure any kind See a statement of this subject, in a late treating upon population. except that which was most easily produced. And | are, at present, derived to us through this importthis, in fact, describes the condition of the mass of ant medium. Not only would the tranquillity of the community in all countries; a condition una-social life be put in peril by the want of a motive voidably, as it should seem, resulting from the pro- to attach men to their private concerns: but the vision which is made in the human, in common satisfaction which all men receive from success in with all animal constitutions, for the perpetuity their respective occupations, which collectively and multiplication of the species. constitutes the great mass of human comfort, would be done away in its very principle. It need not however dishearten any endeavours for the public service, to know that population naturally treads upon the heels of improvement. If the condition of a people be meliorated, the consequence will be either that the mean happiness will be increased, or a greater number partake of it: or, which is most likely to happen, that both effects will take place together. There may be limits fixed by nature to both, but they are limits not yet attained, nor even approached, in any country of the world. And when we speak of limits at all, we have respect only to provisions for animal wants. There are sources, and means, and auxiliaries, and augmentations, of human happiness, communicable without restriction of numbers; as capable of being possessed by a thousand persons as by one. Such are those, which flow from a mild, contrasted with a tyrannic government, whether civil or domestic; those which spring from religion; those which grow out of a sense of security; those which depend upon habits of virtue, sobriety. moderation, order; those, lastly, which are found in the possession of well-directed tastes and desires, compared with the dominion of tormenting, pernicious, contradictory, unsatisfied, and unsatisfiable passions. The distinctions of civil life are apt enough to be regarded as evils, by those who sit under them; but, in my opinion, with very little reason. In the first place, the advantages which the higher conditions of life are supposed to confer, bear no proportion in value to the advantages which are bestowed by nature. The gifts of nature always surpass the gifts of fortune. How much, for example, is activity better than attendance; beauty than dress: appetite, digestion, and tranquil bowels, than all the studies of cookery, or than the most costly compilation of forced or far-fetched dainties! With respect to station, as it is distinguished from riches, whether it confer authority over others, or be invested with honours which apply solely to sentiment and imagination, the truth is, that what is gained by rising through the ranks of life, is not more than sufficient to draw forth the exertions of those who are engaged in the pursuits which lead to advancement, and which, in general, are such as ought to be encouraged. Distinetions of this sort are subjects much more of competition than of enjoyment: and in that competition their use consists. It is not, as hath been rightly observed, by what the lord mayor feels in his coach, but by what the apprentice feels who gazes at him, that the public is served. As we approach the summits of human greatness, the comparison of good and evil, with respect to personal comfort, becomes still more problematical; even allowing to ambition all its pleasures. The poet asks, "What is grandeur, what is power:" The philosopher answers, "Constraint and plague: et in maximâ quâque fortunâ minimum licere." One very common error misleads the opinion of mankind on this head, viz. that, universally, authority is pleasant, submission painful. In the general course of human affairs, the very reverse of this is nearer to the truth. Command is anxiety, obedience ease. Artificial distinctions sometimes promote real equality. Whether they be hereditary, or be the homage paid to office, or the respect attached by public opinion to particular professions, they serve to confront that grand unavoidable distinction which arises from property, and which is most overbearing where there is no other. It is of the nature of property, not only to be irregularly distributed, but to run into large masses. Public laws should be so constructed as to favour its diffusion as much as they can. But all that can be done by laws, consistently with that degree of go to the subject, will not be sufficient to counteract this tendency. There must always therefore be the difference between rich and poor: and this difference will be the more grinding, when no pretension is allowed to be set up against it. Nature has a strong tendency to equalization. Habit, the instrument of nature, is a great level-vernment of his property which ought to be left ler; the familiarity which it induces, taking off the edge both of our pleasures and our sufferings. Indulgences which are habitual, keep us in ease, and cannot be carried much farther. So that, with respect to the gratifications of which the senses are capable, the difference is by no means proportionable to the apparatus. Nay, so far as superfluity generates fastidiousness, the difference is on the wrong side. So that the evils, if evils they must be called, which spring either from the necessary subordinations of civil life, or from the distinctions which have, naturally, though not necessarily, grown up in most societies, so long as they are unaccompanied by privileges injurious or oppressive to the rest of the community, are such, as may, even by the most depressed ranks, be endured with very little prejudice to their comfort. The mischiefs of which mankind are the occasion to one another, by their private wickedness and cruelties, by tyrannical exercises of power; by It is not necessary to contend, that the advantages derived from wealth are none, (under due regulations they are certainly considerable,) but that they are not greater than they ought to be. Money is the sweetener of human toil; the substitute for coercion; the reconciler of labour with liberty. It is, moreover, the stimulant of enterprize in all projects and undertakings, as well as of diligence in the most beneficial arts and employ-rebellions against just authority; by wars; by naments. Now did affluence, when possessed, contribute nothing to the happiness, or nothing beyond the mere supply of necessaries; and the secret should come to be discovered; we might be in danger of losing great part of the uses, which tional jealousies and competitions operating to the destruction of third countries; or by other instances of misconduct either in individuals or societies, are all to be resolved into the character of man as a free agent. Free agency in its very essence con direction, and with the speed, in which and with which, they were in fact begun and performed, the meeting could not be avoided. There was not, therefore, the less necessity in it for its being by chance. Again, the rencounter might be most unfortunate, though the errands, upon which each party set out upon his journey, were the most innocent or the most laudable. The bye effect may be unfavourable, without impeachment of the proper purpose, for the sake of which the train, from the operation of which these consequences ensued, was put in motion. Although no cause act without a good purpose; accidental consequences, like these, may be either good or bad. II. The appearance of chance will always bear a proportion to the ignorance of the observer. The cast of a die as regularly follows the laws of tains liability to abuse. Yet, if you deprive man | of his free agency, you subvert his nature. You may have order from him and regularity, as you may from the tides or the trade-winds, but you put an end to his moral character, to virtue, to merit, to accountableness, to the use indeed of reason. To which must be added the observation, that even the bad qualities of mankind have an origin in their good ones. The case is this: Human passions are either necessary to human welfare, or capable of being made, and, in a great majority of instances, in fact made, conducive to its happiness. These passions are strong and general; and, perhaps, would not answer their purpose unless they were so. But strength and generality, when it is expedient that particular circumstances should be respected, become, if left to themselves, excess and misdirection. From which excess and misdirection, the vices of man-motion, as the going of a watch; yet, because we kind (the causes, no doubt, of much misery) appear to spring. This account, whilst it shows us the principle of vice, shows us, at the same time, the province of reason and of self-government: the want also of every support which can be procured to either from the aids of religion; and it shows this, without having recourse to any native, gratuitous malignity, in the human constitution. Mr. Hume, in his posthumous dialogues, asserts, indeed, of idleness, or aversion to labour, (which he states to lie at the root of a considerable part of the evils which mankind suffer,) that it is simply and merely bad. But how does he distinguish idleness from the love of ease? or is he sure, that the love of ease in individuals is not the chief foundation of social tranquillity? It will be found, I believe, to be true, that in every community there is a large class of its members, whose idleness is the best quality about them, being the corrective of other bad ones. If it were possible, in every instance, to give a right determination to industry, we could never have too much of it. But this is not possible, if men are to be free. And without this, nothing would be so dangerous, as an incessant, universal, indefatigable activity. In the civil world, as well as in the material, it is the vis inertia which keeps things in their places. NATURAL THEOLOGY has ever been pressed with this question: Why, under the regency of the supreme and benevolent Will, should there be in the world, so much, as there is, of the appearance of chance? The question in its whole compass lies beyond our reach: but there are not wanting, as in the origin of evil, answers which seem to have considerable weight in particular cases, and also to embrace a considerable number of cases. I. There must be chance in the midst of design: by which we mean, that events which are not designed, necessarily arise from the pursuit of events which are designed. One man travelling to York, meets another man travelling to London. Their meeting is by chance, is accidental, and so would be called and reckoned, though the journeys which produced the meeting were, both of them, undertaken with design and from deliberation. The meeting, though accidental, was nevertheless hypothetically necessary (which is the only sort of necessity that is intelligible :) for if the two journeys were commenced at the time, pursued in the can trace the operation of those laws through the works and movements of the watch, and cannot trace them in the shaking and throwing of the die (though the laws be the same, and prevail equally in both cases,) we call the turning up of the number of the die chance, the pointing of the index of the watch, machinery, order, or by some name which excludes chance. It is the same in those events which depend upon the will of a free and rational agent. The verdict of a jury, the sentence of a judge, the resolution of an assembly, the issue of a contested election, will have more or less of the appearance of chance, might be more or less the subject of a wager, according as we were less or more acquainted with the reasons which influenced the deliberation. The difference resides in the information of the observer, and not in the thing itself; which, in all the cases proposed, proceeds from intelligence, from mind, from counsel, from design. Now when this one cause of the appearance of chance, viz. the ignorance of the observer, comes to be applied to the operations of the Deity, it is easy to foresee how fruitful it must prove of difficulties and of seeming confusion. It is only to think of the Deity, to perceive what variety of objects, what distance of time, what extent of space and action, his counsels may, or rather must, comprehend. Can it be wondered at, that, of the purposes which dwell in such a mind as this, so small a part should be known to us? It is only necessary, therefore, to bear in our thought, that in proportion to the inadequateness of our information, will be the quantity, in the world, of apparent chance. III. In a great variety of cases, and of cases comprehending numerous subdivisions, it appears, for many reasons, to be better that events rise up by chance, or more properly speaking with the appearance of chance, than according to any observable rule whatever. This is not seldom the case even in human arrangements. Each person's place and precedency, in a public meeting, may be determined by lot. Work and labour may be allotted. Tasks and burdens may be allotted. Operumque laborem Partibus æquabat justis, aut sorte trahebat. Military service and station may be allotted. The distribution of provision may be made by lot, as it is in a sailor's mess; in some cases also, the distribution of favours may be made by lot. In all these cases, it seems to be acknowledged, that there |