THE ANIMATED CREATION. 273 



earth with faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, and 

 with the more active propensities necessarily in great force to 

 suit the condition of the globe, man was apt to misuse his 

 powers much in this way at first, compared with what he is 

 likely to do when he advances into a condition of civilization. 

 In the scheme of Providence, thousands of years of frequent 

 warfare, all the so-called glories which fill history, may be but 

 a subordinate consideration. The chronology of God is not as 

 our chronology. See the patience of waiting evinced in the 

 slow development of the animated kingdoms, throughout the 

 long series of geological ages. Nothing is it to him that an 

 entire goodly planet should, for an inconceivable period, have 

 no inhabiting organisms superior to reptiles. Progressive, not 

 instant effect, is his sublime rule. What, then, can it be to 

 him that the human race goes through a career of impulsive 

 acting for a few thousand years 1 The cruelties of ungoverned 

 anger, the tyrannies of the rude and proud over the humble 

 and good, the martyr's pains, and the patriot's despair, what 

 are all these but incidents of an evolution of superior being 

 which has been pre-arranged and set forward in independent 

 action, free within a certain limit, but in the main constrained, 

 through primordial law, to go on ever brightening and per- 

 fecting, yet never, while the present dispensation of nature 

 shall last, to be quite perfect ! 



The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils. Provi- 

 dence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision for 

 the preservation and utmost possible extension of all species. 

 The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as possible, 

 to fill up every vacant piece of space with some sentient being 

 to be a vehicle of enjoyment. Hence this passion is conferred 

 in great force. But the relation between the number of beings, 

 and the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of 

 general law. There may be occasional discrepancies between 

 the laws operating for the multiplication of individuals, and 

 the laws operating to supply them with the means of sub- 

 sistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even in 

 our own highly favoured species. But against all these evils, 

 and against those numberless vexations which have arisen in 

 all ages from the attachment of the sexes, place the vast 

 amount of happiness which is derived from this source the 

 basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the sweet- 

 ening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous 

 feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves and exertions 



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