so vast, seems to make it extremely probable that perfect goodness
accompanies the exertion of his perfect skill. There is something so
repugnant to all our feelings, but also to all the conceptions of our
reason, in the supposition of such a Being desiring the misery, for its
own sake, of the Beings whom he voluntarily called into existence and
endowed with a sentient nature, that the mind naturally and irresistibly
recoils from such a thought. But this is not all. If the nature of that
great Being were evil, his power being unbounded, there would be some
proportion between the amounts of ills and the monuments of that power.
Yet we are struck dumb with the immensity of His works to which no
imperfection can be ascribed, and in which no evil can be traced, while
the amount of mischief that we see might sink into a most insignificant
space; and is such as a being of inconsiderable power and very limited
skill could easily have accomplished. This is not the same consideration
with the balance of good against evil; and inquirers do not seem to
have sufficiently attended to it. The argument, however, deserves much
attention, for it is purely and strictly inductive. The divine nature
is shown to be clothed with prodigious power and incomparable wisdom and
skill,--power and skill so vast and so exceeding our comprehension that
we ordinarily term them infinite, and are only inclined to conceive the
possibility of limiting, by the course of the argument upon evil, one
alternative of which is assumed to raise an exception. But admitting on
account of the question under discussion, that we have only a right to
say that power and skill are prodigiously great, though possibly not
boundless, they are plainly shown in the phenomena of the universe to
be the attributes of a Being, who, if evil-disposed, could have made the
monuments of Ill upon a scale resembling those of Power and Skill; so
that if those things which seem to us evil be really the result of a
mischievous design in such a Being, we cannot comprehend why they are
upon so entirely different a scale. This is a strong presumption from
the facts that we are wrong in imputing those appearances to such a
disposition. If so, what seems evil must needs be capable of some other
explanation consistent with divine goodness--that is to say, would not
prove to be evil at all if we knew the whole of those facts.
But it is necessary to proceed a step further, especially with a view
to the fundamental position now contended for, the extending to the
question of Benevolence the same principles which we apply to that of
Intelligence. The evil which exists, or that which we suppose to be
evil, not only is of a kind and a magnitude requiring inconceivably less
power and less skill than the admitted good of the creation--it also
bears a very small proportion in amount; quite as small a proportion
as the cases of unknown or undiscoverable design bear to those
of acknowledged and proved contrivance. Generally speaking, the
preservation and the happiness of sensitive creatures appears to be
the great object of creative exertion and conservative providence. The
expanding of our faculties, both bodily and mentally, is accompanied
with pleasure; the exercise of those powers is almost always attended
with gratification; all labor so acts as to make rest peculiarly
delicious; much of labor is enjoyment; the gratification of those
appetites by which both the individual is preserved and the race is
continued, is highly pleasurable to all animals; and it must be observed
that instead of being attracted by grateful sensations to do anything
requisite for our good or even our existence, we might have been just as
certainly urged by the feeling of pain, or the dread of it, which is a
kind of suffering in itself. Nature, then, resembles the law-giver
who, to make his subjects obey, should prefer holding out rewards
for compliance with his commands rather than denounce punishments for
disobedience. But nature is yet more kind; she is gratuitously kind; she
not only prefers inducement to threat or compulsion, but she adds more
gratification than was necessary to make us obey her calls. How well
might all creation have existed and been continued, though the air had
not been balmy in spring, or the shade and the spring refreshing in
summer; had the earth not been enamelled with flowers; and the air
scented with perfumes! How needless for the propagation of plants was
it that the seed should be enveloped in fruits the most savory to our
palate, and if those fruits serve some other purpose, how foreign to
that purpose was the formation of our nerves so framed as to be soothed
or excited by their flavor! We here perceive design, because we trace
adaptation. But we at the same time perceive benevolent design, because
we perceive gratuitous and supererogatory enjoyment bestowed. Thus,
too, see the care with which animals of all kinds are tended from their
birth. The mother’s instinct is not more certainly the means of securing
and providing for her young, than her gratification in the act of
maternal care is great and is also needless for making her perform that
duty. The grove is not made vocal during pairing and incubation, in
order to secure the laying or the hatching of eggs; for if it were as
still as the grave, or were filled with the most discordant croaking,
the process would be as well performed. So, too, mark the care with
which injuries are remedied by what has been correctly called the _vis
medicatrix_. Is a muscle injured?--Suppuration takes place, the process
of granulation succeeds, and new flesh is formed to supply the gap, or
if that is less wide, a more simple healing process knits together
the severed parts. Is a bone injured?--A process commences by which
an extraordinary secretion of bony matter takes place, and the void
is supplied. Nay, the irreparable injury of a joint gives rise to
the formation of a new hinge, by which the same functions may be not
inconveniently, though less perfectly, performed. Thus, too, recovery of
vigor after sickness is provided for by increased appetite; but there
is here superadded, generally, a feeling of comfort and lightness, an
enjoyment of existence so delightful, that it is a common remark how
nearly this compensates the sufferings of the illness. In the economy
of the mind it is the same thing. All our exertions are stimulated by
curiosity, and the gratification is extreme of satisfying it. But it
might have been otherwise ordered, and some painful feeling might have
been made the only stimulant to the acquisition of knowledge. So, the
charm of novelty is proverbial; but it might have been the unceasing
cause of the most painful alarms. Habit renders every thing easy; but
the repetition might have only increased the annoyance. The loss of one
organ makes the others more acute. But the partial injury might have
caused, as it were, a general paralysis. ‘Tis thus that Paley is well
justified in exclaiming, “It is a happy world after all!” The pains and
the sufferings, bodily and mental, to which we are exposed, if they
do not sink into nothing, at least retreat within comparatively narrow
bounds; the ills are hardly seen when we survey the great and splendid
picture of worldly enjoyment or ease.
But the existence of considerable misery is undeniable: and the question
is, of course, confined to that. Its exaggeration, in the ordinary
estimate both of the vulgar and of skeptical reasoners, is equally
certain. Paley, Bishop Sumner, as well as Derham, King, Ray and others
of the older writers, have made many judicious and generally correct
observations upon its amount, and they, as well as some of the able
and learned authors of the _Bridgwater Treatises_, have done much in
establishing deductions necessary to be made, in order that we may
arrive at the true amount. That many things, apparently unmixed evils,
when examined more narrowly, prove to be partially beneficial, is the
fair result of their well-meant labors; and this, although anything
rather than a proof that there is no evil at all, yet is valuable as
still further proving the analogy between this branch of the argument
and that upon design; and in giving hopes that all may possibly be
found hereafter to be good, as everything will assuredly be found to be
contrived with an intelligent and useful purpose. It may be right to add
a remark or two upon some evils, and those of the greatest magnitude
in the common estimate of human happiness, with a view of further
illustrating this part of the subject.
Mere imperfection must altogether be deducted from the account. It
never can be contended that any evil nature can be ascribed to the first
cause, merely for not having endowed sentient creatures with greater
power or wisdom, for not having increased and multiplied the sources
of enjoyment, or for not having made those pleasures which we have more
exquisitely grateful. No one can be so foolish as to argue that the
Deity is either limited in power, or deficient in goodness, because he
has chosen to create some beings of a less perfect order than others.
The mere negation in the creating of some, indeed of many, nay, of
any conceivable number of desirable attributes, is therefore no proper
evidence of evil design or of limited power in the Creator--it is no
proof of the existence of evil properly so called. But does not this
also erase death from the catalogue of ills? It might well please the
Deity to create a mortal being which, consisting of soul and body, was
only to live upon this earth for a limited number of years. If, when
that time has expired, this being is removed to another and a superior
state of existence, no evil whatever accrues to it from the change;
and all views of the government of this world lead to the important and
consolitary conclusion, that such is the design of the Creator; that he
cannot have bestowed on us minds capable of such expansion and culture
only to be extinguished when they have reached their highest pitch
of improvement; or if this be considered as begging the question by
assuming benevolent design, we cannot easily conceive that while the
mind’s force is so little affected by the body’s decay, the destruction
or dissolution of the latter should be the extinction of the former. But
that death operates as an evil of the very highest kind in two ways is
obvious; the dread of it often embitters life, and the death of friends
brings to the mind by far its most painful infliction; certainly the
greatest suffering it can undergo without any criminal consciousness of
its own.
For this evil, then--this grievous and admitted evil--how shall we
account? But first let us consider whether it be not unavoidable; not
merely under the present dispensation, and in the existing state of
things; for that is wholly irrelevant to the question which is raised
upon the fitness of this very state of things; but whether it be not a
necessary evil. That man might have been created immortal is not denied;
but if it were the will of the Deity to form a limited being and to
place him upon the earth for only a certain period of time, his death
was the necessary consequence of this determination. Then as to the pain
which one person’s removal inflicts upon surviving parties, this seems
the equally necessary consequence of their having affections. For if
any being feels love towards another, this implies his desire that the
intercourse with that other should continue; or what is the same thing,
the repugnance and aversion to its ceasing; that is, he must suffer
affliction for that removal of the beloved object. To create sentient
beings devoid of all feelings of affection was no doubt possible to
Omnipotence; but to endow those beings with such feelings as would give
the constant gratification derived from the benevolent affections, and
yet to make them wholly indifferent to the loss of the objects of those
affections, was not possible even for Omnipotence; because it was a
contradiction in terms, equivalent to making a thing both exist and not
exist at one and the same time. Would there have been any considerable
happiness in a life stripped of these kindly affections? We cannot
affirm that there would not, because we are ignorant what other
enjoyments might have been substituted for the indulgence of them. But
neither can we affirm that any such substitution could have been found;
and it lies upon those who deny the necessary connection between the
human mind, or any sentient being’s mind, and grief for the loss of
friends, to show that there are other enjoyments which could furnish an
equivalent to the gratification derived from the benevolent feelings.
The question then reduces itself to this: Wherefore did a being, who
could have made sentient beings immortal, choose to make them mortal?
or, Wherefore has he placed man upon the earth for a time only? or,
Wherefore has he set bounds to the powers and capacities which he has
been pleased to bestow upon his creatures? And this is a question which
we certainly never shall be able to solve; but a question extremely
different from the one more usually put--How happens it that a good
being has made a world full of misery and death?
In the necessary ignorance wherein we are of the whole designs of the
Deity, we cannot wonder if some things, nay, if many things, are to our
faculties inscrutable. But we assuredly have no right to say that those
difficulties which try and vex us are incapable of a solution, any more
than we have to say, that those cases in which as yet we can see no
trace of design, are not equally the result of intelligence, and equally
conducive to a fixed and useful purpose with those in which we have been
able to perceive the whole, or nearly the whole scheme. Great as have
been our achievements in physical astronomy, we are as yet wholly unable
to understand why a power pervades the system acting inversely as the
squares of the distance from the point to which it attracts, rather
than a power acting according to any other law; and why it has been the
pleasure of the almighty Architect of that universe, that the orbits
of the planets should be nearly circular instead of approaching to, or
being exactly the same with many other trajectories of a nearly similar
form, though of other properties; nay, instead of being curves of a
wholly different class and shape. Yet we never doubt that there was a
reason for this choice; nay, we fancy it possible that even on earth
we may hereafter understand it more clearly than we now do: and never
question that in another state of being we may be permitted to enjoy the
contemplation of it. Why should we doubt that, at least in that higher
state, we may also be enabled to perceive such an arrangement as shall
make evil wholly disappear from our present system, by showing that it
was necessary and inevitable, even in the works of the Deity; or, which
is the same thing, that its existence conduces to such a degree
of perfection and happiness upon, the whole, as could not, even by
Omnipotence, be attained without it; or, which is the same thing,
that the whole creation as it exists, taking both worlds together, is
perfect, and incapable of being in any particular changed without being
made worse and less perfect? Taking both worlds together--For certainly
were our views limited to the present sublunary state, we may well
affirm that no solution whatever could even be imagined of the
difficulty--if we are never again to live; if those we here loved are
forever lost to us; if our faculties can receive no further expansion;
if our mental powers are only trained and improved to be extinguished
at their acme--then indeed are we reduced to the melancholy and gloomy
dilemma of the Epicureans; and evil is confessed to checker, nay, almost
to cloud over our whole lot, without the possibility of comprehending
why, or of reconciling its existence with the supposition of a
providence at once powerful and good. But this inference is also an
additional argument for a future state, when we couple it with these
other conclusions respecting the economy of the world to which we are
led by wholly different routes, when we investigate the phenomena around
us and within us.
Suppose, for example, it should be found that there are certain purposes
which can in no way whatever--no conceivable way--be answered except
by placing man in a state of trial or probation; suppose the essential
nature of mind shall be found to be such that it could not in any
way whatever exist so as to be capable of the greatest purity and
improvement--in other words, the highest perfection--without having
undergone a probation; or suppose it should be found impossible to
communicate certain enjoyments to rational and sentient beings
without having previously subjected them to certain trials and certain
sufferings--as, for instance, the pleasures derived from a consciousness
of perfect security, the certainty that we can suffer and perish no
more--this surely is a possible supposition. Now, to continue the last
example--Whatever pleasure there is in the contrast between ease and
previous vexation or pain, whatever enjoyment we derive from the feeling
of absolute security after the vexation and uncertainty of a precarious
state, implies a previous suffering--a previous state of precarious
enjoyment; and not only implies it but necessarily implies it, so that
the power of Omnipotence itself could not convey to us the enjoyment
without having given us the previous suffering. Then is it not possible
that the object of an all powerful and perfectly benevolent being should
be to create like beings, to whom as entire happiness, as complete and
perfect enjoyment, should be given as any created beings--that is, any
being, except the Creator himself--can by possibility enjoy? This is
certainly not only a very possible supposition, but it appears to be
quite consistent with, if it be not a necessary consequence of, his
being perfectly good as well as powerful and wise. Now we have shown,
therefore, that such being supposed the design of Providence, even
Omnipotence itself could not accomplish this design, as far as one great
and important class of enjoyments is concerned, without the previous
existence of some pain, some misery. Whatever gratification arises
from relief--from contrast--from security succeeding anxiety--from
restoration of lost affections--from renewing severed connections--and
many others of a like kind, could not by any possibility be enjoyed
unless the correlative suffering had first been undergone. Nor will the
argument be at all impeached by observing, that one Being may be made
to feel the pleasure of ease and security by seeing others subjected
to suffering and distress; for that assumes the infliction of misery on
those others; it is “_alterius_ spectare laborem” that we are supposing
to be sweet; and this is still partial evil.
As the whole argument respecting evil must, from the nature of the
question, resolve itself into either a proof of some absolute or
mathematical necessity not to be removed by infinite power, or the
showing that some such proof may be possible although we have not
yet discovered it, an illustration may naturally be expected to be
attainable from mathematical considerations. Thus, we have already
adverted to the law of periodical irregularities in the solar system.
Any one before it was discovered seemed entitled to expatiate upon the
operation of the disturbing forces arising from mutual attraction,
and to charge the system arranged upon the principle of universal
gravitation with want of skill, nay, with leading to inevitable
mischief--mischief or evil of so prodigious an extent as to exceed
incalculably all the instances of evil and of suffering which we see
around us in this single planet. Nevertheless, what then appeared so
clearly to be a defect and an evil, is now well known to be the very
absolute perfection of the whole heavenly architecture.
Again, we may derive a similar illustration from a much more limited
instance, but one immediately connected with strict mathematical
reasoning, and founded altogether in the nature of necessary truth. The
problem has been solved by mathematicians, Sir Isaac Newton having first
investigated it, of finding the form of a symmetrical solid, or solid of
revolution, which in moving through a fluid shall experience the least
possible resistance. The figure bears a striking resemblance to that of
a fish. Now suppose a fish were formed exactly in this shape, and
that some animal endowed with reason were placed upon a portion of its
surface, and able to trace its form for only a limited extent, say at
the narrow part, where the broad portion or end of the moving body were
opposed, or seemed as if it were opposed, to the surrounding fluid when
the fish moved--the reasoner would at once conclude that the contrivance
of the fish’s form was very inconvenient, and that nothing could be much
worse adapted for expeditious or easy movement through the waters.
Yet it is certain that upon being afterwards permitted to view THE WHOLE
body of the fish, what had seemed a defect and an evil, not only would
appear plainly to be none at all, but it would appear manifest that
this seeming evil or defect was a part of the most perfect and excellent
structure which it was possible even for Omnipotence and Omniscience
to have adopted, and that no other conceivable arrangement could by
possibility have produced so much advantage, or tended so much to
fulfill the design in view. Previous to being enlightened by such
an enlarged view of the whole facts, it would thus be a rash and
unphilosophical thing in the reasoner whose existence we are supposing
to pronounce an unfavorable opinion. Still more unwise would it be if
numerous other observations had evinced traces of skill and goodness
in the fish’s structure. The true and the safe conclusion would be to
suspend an opinion which could only be unsatisfactorily formed upon
imperfect data; and to rest in the humble hope and belief that one day
all would appear for the best.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The “light of revelation,” as well as the “light of the
Christian religion,” has not dispelled the darkness of ignorance. The
torch of reason is a surer guide.--_Pub._]
[Footnote 2: The human race has from time immemorial been afflicted with
so-called revelations, all claiming inspiration, all conflicting, and
all being equally “mysterious and obscure.” The wars arising among these
sectarians have retarded civilization, and deluged the earth in blood.
The revelations of science, founded upon reason and demonstration, have
proved the only safe and beneficent guide.--_Pub._]
[Footnote 3: While it is true that the argument of Design, here given,
places the subject one step in advance, it is still unsatisfactory,
because it fails to explain to us who designed the designer, and the
mystery of creation still remains unsolved.
“What think you of an uncaused cause of everything?” is the pertinent
question which Bishop Watson, in his _Apology for the Bible_, asked, and
vainly asked, of the celebrated deist, Thomas Paine.--_Pub._]