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LETTER IX, 
BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS, 
INDIRECT BENEFITS, 
My last letters contained, I must own, a most melancholy though not an 
overcharged picture of the injuries and devastation which man, in various 
ways, experiences through the instrumentality of the insect world. In 
this and the following I hope to place before you a more agreeable scene, 
since in them I shall endeavour to point out in what respects these minute 
| animals are made to benefit us, and what advantages we reap from their 
| extensive agency. 
~= God, in all the evil which he permits to take place, whether spiritual, 
moral, or natural, has the ultimate good of his creatures in view. The 
evil that we suffer is often a countercheck which restrains us from greater 
evil, or a spur to stimulate us to good: we should therefore consider 
every thing, not according to the present sensation of pain, or the present 
loss or injury that it occasions, but according to its more general, remote, 
and permanent effects and bearings ;—whether by it we are not impelled 
to the practice of many virtues which otherwise might lie dormant in us— 
whether our moral habits are not improved — whether we are not rendered 
by it more prudent, cautious, and wary, more watchful to prevent evil, 
more ingenious and skilful to remedy it—and whether our higher faculties 
are not brought more into play, and our mental powers more invigorated, 
by the meditation and experiments necessary to secure ourselves. Viewed 
in these lights, what was at first regarded as wholly made up of evil, may 
be discovered to contain a considerable proportion of good. 
This reasoning is here particularly applicable : and if the ultimate benefit 
to man seems in any case problematical, it is merely because to discover it 
requires more extended and remote views than we are enabled by our 
linited faculties to take, and a knowledge of distant or concealed results 
which we are incompetent to calculate or discover. The common guod 
of this terraqueous globe requires that all things endowed with vegetable 
or animal life should bear certain proportions to each other; and if any 
individual species exceeds that proportion, from beneficial it becomes 
noxious, and interferes with the general welfare. It was requisite there- 
fore for the benefit of the whole system that certain means should be 
provided, by which this hurtful luxuriance might be checked, and all things 
tuught to keep within their proper limits: hence it became necessary that 
some should prey upon others, and a part be sacrificed for the good of the 
whole. 
-* Of the counterchecks thus provided, none act a more important part 
than insects, particularly in the vegetable kingilom, every plant having its 
insect enemies. Man, when he takes any plant trom its natural state. and 
