Is there any such thing? That is not the question. For it is a fact
acknowledged on all hands almost: and even those who will not confess
it in words, confess it in their complaints. For my part I cannot but
confess that _to be_, which I feel and groan under, and by which all
the world is miserable.
Adam turned his back on the sun, and dwelt in the dark and the shadow.
He sinned, and brought evil into his _supernatural_ endowments, and
lost the Sacrament and Instrument of Immortality, the Tree of Life in
the centre of the garden.[108] He then fell under the evils of a
sickly body, and a passionate and ignorant soul. His sin made him
sickly, his sickness made him peevish: his sin left him ignorant, his
ignorance made him foolish and unreasonable. His sin left him to his
_nature_: and by nature, whoever was to be born at all, was to be born
a child, and to do before he could understand, and to be bred under
laws to which he was always bound, but which could not always be
exacted; and he was to choose when he could not reason, and had
passions most strong when he had his understanding most weak; and the
more need he had of a curb, the less strength he had to use it! And
this being the case of all the world, what was _every_ man's evil
became _all_ men's greater evil; and though alone it was very bad, yet
when they came together it was made much worse. Like ships in a storm,
every one alone hath enough to do to outride it; but when they meet,
besides the evils of the storm, they find the intolerable calamity of
their mutual concussion; and every ship that is ready to be oppressed
with the tempest, is a worse tempest to every vessel against which it
is violently dashed. So it is in mankind. Every man hath evil enough
of his own, and it is hard for a man to live up to the rule of his own
reason and conscience. But when he hath parents and children, friends
and enemies, buyers and sellers, lawyers and clients, a family and a
neighbourhood--then it is that every man dashes against another, and
one relation requires what another denies; and when one speaks another
will contradict him; and that which is well spoken is sometimes
innocently mistaken; and that upon a good cause produces an evil
effect; and by these, and ten thousand other concurrent causes, man is
made more than most miserable.[109]