270 
THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. 
of their choice, should seem to be an original source of 
enjoyment. The pleasures received from things, great, 
beautiful, or new, from imitation, or from the liberal arts, 
are in some measure, not only superadded, but unmixed, 
gratifications, having no pains to balance them.* 
I do not know whether our attachment to property be 
not something more than the mere dictate of reason, or 
even than the mere effect of association. Property com¬ 
municates a charm to whatever is the object of it. It is 
the first of our abstract ideas; it cleaves to us the closest 
and the longest. It endears to the child its plaything, to 
the peasant his cottage, to the landholder his estate. It 
supplies the place of prospect and scenery. Instead of 
coveting the beauty of distant situations, it teaches every 
man to find it in his own. It gives boldness and gran¬ 
deur to plains and fens, tinge and coloring to clays and 
fallows. 
All these considerations come in aid of our second pro¬ 
position. The reader will now bear in mind what our two 
propositions were. They were, firstly, that in a vast plu¬ 
rality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the 
design of the contrivance is beneficial: secondly, that the 
Deity has added pleasure to animal sensations beyond what 
was necessary for any other purpose; or when the purpose, 
so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the 
operation of pain. 
Whilst these propositions can be maintained, we are 
authorised to ascribe to the Deity the character of benevo¬ 
lence: and what is benevolence at all, must in him be in¬ 
finite benevolence, by reason of the infinite, that is to say, 
the incalculably great, number of objects upon which it is 
exercised. 
Of the origin of evil, no universal solution has been 
discovered; I mean, no solution which reaches to all cases 
of complaint. The most comprehensive is that which 
arises from the consideration of general rides. We may, I 
think, without much difficulty, be brought to admit the four 
following points: first, that important advantages may ac¬ 
crue to the universe from the order of nature proceeding ac¬ 
cording to general laws: secondly, that general laws, how¬ 
ever well set and constituted, often thwart and cross one 
another: thirdly, that from these thwartings and crossings, 
frequent particular inconveniences will arise: and, fourth- 
* Balguy on the Divine Benevolence. 
