"

66 a new favour from the divine munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a "traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, "to lament that he cannot take up his residence at "the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road.

"The instability of human life, or of the changes "of its successive periods, of which we so frequently "complain, are no more than the necessary progress "of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far "from being Evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The con"tinual succession of seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agree"able, and like those of the year, afford us delights

66

66

by their change, which the choicest of them could "not give us by their continuance. In the spring of "life, the gilding of the sun-shine, the verdure of "the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, "are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first "looking abroad into a new world, as nothing per"haps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour "of the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us "new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly "revel, and the jovial chace: the serene autumn of "complete manhood feasts us with the golden har"vests of our worldly pursuits: nor is the hoary "winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and re"lation of those past are perhaps none of the least;

"from whence we shall probably look back upon "the diversions and occupations of this world with "the same contempt we do now on our tops and "hobby-horses, and with the same surprise that "they could ever so much entertain or engage us.” I would not willingly detract from the beauty of this paragraph; and in gratitude to him who has so well inculcated such important truths, I will venture to admonish him, since the chief comfort of the old is the recollection of the past, so to employ his time and his thoughts, that when the imbecility of age shall come upon him, he may be able to recreate its languors by the remembrance of hours spent, not in presumptuous decisions, but modest enquiries, not in dogmatical limitations of Omnipotence, but in humble acquiescence and fervent adoration. Old age will show him that much of the book now before us has no other use than to perplex the scrupulous, and to shake the weak, to encourage impious presumption, or stimulate idle curiosity.

Having thus dispatched the consideration of particular evils, he comes at last to a general reason for which Evil may be said to be our Good. He is of opinion that there is some inconceivable benefit in pain abstractedly considered; that pain, however inflicted, or wherever felt, communicates some good to the general system of being, and that every animal is some way or other the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far as to suppose that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction is communicated to all corporeal nature;

1

and that the Evils suffered on this globe, may by some inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of the inhabitants of the remotest planet.

How the Origin of Evil is brought nearer to human conception by any inconceivable means, I am not able to discover. We believed that the present system of creation was right, though we could not explain the adaptation of one part to the other, or for the whole succession of causes and consequences. Where has this enquirer added to the little knowledge that we had before? He has told us of the benefits of Evil, which no man feels, and relations between distant parts of the universe, which he cannot himself conceive. There was enough in this question inconceivable before, and we have little advantage from a new inconceivable solution.

I do not mean to reproach this author for not knowing what is equally hidden from learning and from ignorance. The shame is to impose words for ideas upon ourselves or others. To imagine

that we are going forward when we are only turning round. To think that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which by his own confession cannot be conceived.

But that he may not be thought to conceive nothing but things inconceivable, he has at last thought on a way by which human sufferings may produce good effects. He imagines that as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment,

or destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which by analogy is so strongly confirmed.

I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which I think he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these hunters whose game is man have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim or the walls of Prague, as we encircle a cock-pit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the airpump. To swell a man with a tympany is as good sport as to blow a frog. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diver sions, for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which undoubtedly must make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend. extend. Perhaps now and then a

merry being may place himself in such a situation as to enjoy at once all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain exhibited together.

One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying to which we have nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions, till in time they make their plaything an author: their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible to be understood. Sometimes, however, it happens that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain, but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to one another as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying his own applause, and that of his companions, and perhaps is elevated with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect.

Many of the books which now crowd the world,