280 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 



forced to acknowledge that, upon the theory of a divine action 

 in the manner of law, everything is very good. 



Nor are any of the ordinary evils of our world altogether 

 unmixed. God, contemplating apparently the unbending 

 action of his great laws, has established others which appear 

 to be designed to have a compensating, a repairing, and a con- 

 soling effect. Suppose, for instance, that, from a defect in the 

 power of development in a mother, her offspring is ushered 

 into the world destitute of some of the most useful members, 

 or blind, or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be 

 found in the parents and other relatives, and in the surround- 

 ing public, a sympathy with the sufferer, which tends to make 

 up the deficiency, so that he usually is in the long -run not 

 much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence implanted in our 

 nature seems to be an arrangement having for one of its 

 principal objects to cause us, by sympathy and active aid, to 

 remedy the evils unavoidably suffered by our fellow-creatures 

 in the course of the operation of the other natural laws. And 

 even in the sufferer himself, it is often found that a defect in 

 one point is made up for by an extra power in another. The 

 blind come to have a sense of touch much more acute than 

 those who see. Persons born without hands have been known 

 to acquire a power of using their feet for a number of the prin- 

 cipal offices usually served by those members. I need hardly 

 say how remarkably fatuity is compensated by the more than 

 usual regard paid to the children born with it by their parents, 

 and the zeal which others usually feel to protect and succour 

 such persons. In short, we never see evil of any kind take 

 place, where there is not some remedy or compensating prin- 

 ciple ready to interfere for its alleviation. And there can be 

 no doubt that in this manner suffering of all kinds is very 

 much relieved. 



We may, then, regard the globes of space as theatres designed 

 for the residence of animated sentient beings, placed there with 

 this as their first and most obvious purpose to be sensible of 

 enjoyments from the exercise of their faculties in relation to 

 external things. The faculties of the various species are very 

 different, but the happiness of each depends on the harmony 

 there may be between its particular faculties and its particular 

 circumstances. For instance, place the small-brained sheep or 

 ox in a good pasture, and it fully enjoys this harmony of rela- 

 tion ; but man, having many more faculties, cannot be thus 

 contented. .Besides having a sufficiency of food and bodily 



