NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 277 



persons, is evidently a consideration quite apart from 

 that suffering. 



It is clear, moreover, from the whole scope of the 

 natural laws, that the individual, as far as the present 

 sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of Nature 

 a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see 

 the arrangements for the species perfect ; the individual 

 is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the melee of 

 the various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorly 

 endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at least no par- 

 tiality against him. The system has the fairness of a 

 lottery, in which every one has the like chance of draw- 

 ing the prize. 



Yet it is also to be observed that few evils are alto- 

 gether unmixed. God, contemplating apparently the un- 

 bending action of his great laws, has established others 

 which appear to be designed to have a compensating, 

 a repairing, and a consoling effect. Suppose, for in- 

 stance, that, from a defect in the power of development 

 in a mother, her offspring is ushered into the world 

 destitute of some of the most useful members, or blind, 

 or deaf, or of imperfect intellect, there is ever to be 

 found in the parents and other relatives, and in the 

 surrounding public, a sympathy with the sufferei", which 

 tends to make up for the deficiency, so that he is in the 

 long run not much a loser. Indeed, the benevolence 

 implanted in our nature seems to be an arrangement 

 having for ©ne of its principal objects to cause us, by 

 sympathy and active aid, to remedy the evils unavoidably 

 suffered by oui' fellow-creatures in the course of the 

 operation of the other natural laws. And even in the 

 sufferer himself, it is often found that a defect in one 

 point is made up for by an extra power in another. The 



