^ 



DUE TO THE DOGMA OF INFINITY. 317 



of the argument depends upon a wholly unwar- 

 ranted analogy with human law^ It is true that 

 human laws cannot avoid the commission of a 

 certain amount of injustice, because law is general, 

 and cannot be made to fit the requirements of 

 particular cases. But how can we argue from the 

 impotence of limited beings to the powers of 

 mnipotence ? How can we suppose the divine 

 intelligence incapable of devising, or the divine 

 omnipotence incapable of executing, laws, which 

 should not fail to be just in every case, to be absol- 

 utely good always and under all circumstances? 

 The argument surely forgets that the laws of nature 

 are ex hypothesi the outcome of absolute legislative 

 power directed by absolute wisdom, and might 

 surely have been so enacted as to work with per- 

 fect smoothness. And even if the universality of 

 law were incompatible with perfection, why should 

 not perfect goodness have been secured by a series 

 of miraculous interventions ? How should we have 

 been the wiser or the worse ? Would not such a 

 series have ipso facto become the legitimate order 

 of things? And how could even the most fastidious 

 taste have objected to a deus ex machina, when no 

 other procedure was known ? What then can have 

 prompted the preference of law with its imper- 

 fection ? Shall it be said that it was preferred as 

 demanding less exertion of the divine power ? But 

 it is both unprofitable and repugnant to exhaust 

 the resources of unworthy human analogies in order 

 to reject one after another the foolish palliatives of 

 an insoluble contradiction. 



§ 5. The simple truth is that the human dis- 

 tinctions of good and evil have no application to 

 an infinite Deity. We mtist admit that either all 



