v act in the Eternal World. 75 



possible to doubt that this will be effected as part of 

 the natural order and course of things, and will thus 

 be a case of progress by the natural selection of the 

 fittest. For, by the nature of things, virtue tends to 

 prevail ; and when this is defeated, it is due either to 

 the want of time for that tendency to work out its 

 natural results, or to the counteraction of influences 

 which belong to the material and not to the moral 

 world, and are, in the logical sense, merely accidental 

 to the latter. But in the eternal world there will 

 be unlimited time for such tendencies to work out 

 their natural and legitimate results; and it cannot 

 be doubted that all counteracting agencies shall be 

 removed. 1 



1 The foregoing paragraph contains, in an extremely condensed 

 form and in modern language, some of the most important 

 ideas and arguments of the third chapter of the first part of 

 Butler's Analogy of Religion. 



