J 40 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



dustry ; their various arts and their best attain- 

 ments, from the application of which they draw, if 

 not their highest, their most permanent gratifica- 

 tions, would be insignificant, if things could be 

 either moulded by our volitions, or, of their own 

 accord, conformed themselves to our views and 

 wishes. Now it is in this refractoriness that we 

 discern the seed and principle o{ physical evil, as 

 far as it arises from that which is external to us. 

 Civil evils,'^^ or the evils of civil life, are much 

 more easily disposed of, than physical evils: be- 

 cause they are, in truth, of much less magnitude, 

 and also because they result, by a kind of neces- 

 sity, not only from the constitution of our nature, 

 but from a part of that constitution which no one 

 would wish to see altered. The case is this : 

 Mankind will in every country breed up to a cer- 

 tain point of distress. That point may be differ- 

 ent in different countries or ages, according to the 

 established usages of life in each. It will also 

 shift upon the scale, so as to admit of a greater or 

 less number of inhabitants, according as the quan- 

 tity of provision, which is either produced in the 



** In all arguments respecting civil and political evils it is im- 

 portant to keep the distinction steadily in view between content- 

 ment under necessary sufferings, and quietism under such as nay 

 be avoided by improvements in our institutions. Contentment, 

 indeed, under even the latter, is a virtue as well as a solace, during 

 the period required for their safe and legitimate amendment ; but 

 this is no exception to the rule which we have glanced at; for the 

 sufferings must be considered necessary until their removal can 

 be safely effected. 



