144 



LETTER IX. 



BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



INDIRECT BENEFITS. 



MY kst letters contained, I must own, a most melancholy though not an 

 overcharged picture of the injuries and devastation which man, in various 

 ways, experiences through the instrumentality of the insect world. In 

 this and the following I hope to place before you a more agreeable scene, 

 since in them I shall endeavour to point out in what respects these minute 

 animals are made to benefit us, and what advantages we reap from their 

 extensive agency. 



God, in all the evil which he permits to take place, whether spiritual, 

 moral, or natural, has the ultimate good of his creatures in view. The 

 evil that we suffer is often a countercheck which restrains us from greater 

 evil, or a spur to stimulate us to good : we should therefore consider 

 every thing, not according to the present sensation of pain, or the present 

 loss or injury that it occasions, but according to its more general, remote, 

 and permanent effects and bearings; whether by it we are not impelled 

 to the practice of many virtues which otherwise might lie dormant in us 

 whether our moral habits are not improved whether we are not rendered 

 by it more prudent, cautious, and wary, more watchful to prevent evil, 

 more ingenious and skilful to remedy it and whether our higher faculties 

 are not brought more into play, and our mental powers more invigorated, 

 by the meditation and experiments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed 

 in these lights, what was at first regarded as wholly made up of evil, may 

 be discovered to contain a considerable proportion of good. 



This reasoning is here particularly applicable : and if the ultimate benefit 

 to man seems in any case problematical, it is merely because to discover it 

 requires more extended and remote views than we are enabled by our 

 limited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or concealed results 

 which we are incompetent to calculate or discover. The common good 

 of this terraqueous globe requires that all things endowed with vegetable 

 or animal life should bear certain proportions to each other; and if any 

 individual species exceeds that proportion, from beneficial it becomes 

 noxious, and interferes with the general welfare. It was requisite there- 

 fore for the benefit of the whole system that certain means should be 

 provided, by which this hurtful luxuriance might be checked, and all things 

 taught to keep within their proper limits : hence it became necessary that 

 some should prey upon others, and a part be sacrificed for the good of the 

 whole. 



Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more important part 

 than insects, particularly in the vegetable kingdom, every plant having its 

 insect enemies* Man, when he takes any plant from its natural state, and 



