234 FACTS AND FANCIES 



one law and another, and can even evade or 

 counteract one law by employing another, or 

 can resolve to be disobedient. Rational free 

 agents may thus enter into courses not in har- 

 mony with their own interests or their relations 

 to their surroundings. Hence, so soon as it 

 pleased God to introduce in any part of the 

 universe a free rational will gifted with certain 

 powers over lower nature, only two courses 

 were possible : either God must leave such free 

 agent wholly to his own devices, making him a 

 god on a small scale, and so far practically ab- 

 dicating in his favor, or he must place him un- 

 der some law, and this not of the nature of 

 mere physical compulsion — ^which, on the hy- 

 pothesis, would be inadmissible — ^but in the na- 

 ture of requirements addressed to his reason 

 and his conscience. Hence w^j might infer a 

 priori the probability of some sort of communi- 

 cation between God and man. Further, did 

 we find such rational creature beginning, on his 

 introduction into the world, to mar the face of 

 nature, to inflict unnecessary suffering or injury 

 on lower creatures or on members of his own 

 species, to disregard the moral instincts im- 

 planted in him, or to disown the God who had 

 created him, we should still more distincdy per- 



