260 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 



With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffer- 

 ing to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated 

 but regular process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, 

 and is a source of continual gratification, so long as nothing 

 occurs to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable 

 every moment to be deranged by various external agencies, 

 when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, 

 ceases to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily 

 admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very 

 great ; but, after all, such experiences are no more than occa- 

 sional, and not necessarily frequent exceptions from a general 

 rule of which the direct action is to confer happiness. The 

 human constitution might have been made of a more hardy 

 character ; but we always see hardiness and insensibility go 

 together, and it may be of course presumed that we only 

 could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the 

 expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some 

 of our most agreeable sensations. Or man's faculties might 

 have been restricted to definitiveness of action, as is greatly 

 the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should 

 have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to 

 disease ; but in that event we should have been incapable of 

 acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the 

 many high enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties 

 places in our power ; we should not, in short, have been human 

 beings, but merely on a level with the inferior animals. 

 Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man's constitution, 

 that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane 

 economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely 

 delightful sensations it is this which makes him liable to the 

 sufferings of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, 

 that the noxiousness of the agencies producing disease might 

 have been diminished or extinguished ; but the probability is, 

 that this could not have been done without such a derange- 

 ment of the whole economy of nature as would have been 

 attended with more serious evils. For example a large class 

 of diseases are the result of effluvia from decaying organic 

 matter. This kind of matter is known to be extremely useful 



