276 
THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. 
is not these, but the latter class of our pleasures, which con¬ 
stitute satisfaction; which supply that regular stream of 
moderate and miscellaneous enjoyments, in which happi¬ 
ness, as distinguished from voluptuousness, consists. Now 
for rational occupation, which is, in other words, for the 
very material of contented existence, there would be no 
place left, if either the things with which we had to do 
were absolutely impracticable to our endeavours, or if they 
were too obedient to our uses. A world, furnished with 
advantages on One side, and beset with difficulties, wants, 
and inconveniencies on the other, is the proper abode of 
free, rational, and active natures, being the fittest to stim¬ 
ulate and exercise their faculties. The very refractoriness 
of the objects they have to deal with, contributes to this 
purpose. A world in which nothing depended upon our¬ 
selves, however it might have suited an imaginary race of 
beings, would not have suited mankind. Their skill, pru¬ 
dence, industry; their various arts, and their best attain¬ 
ments, from the application of which they draw, if not their 
highest, their most permanent gratifications, would be insig¬ 
nificant, if things could be either moulded by our volitions, 
or, of their own accord, conformed themselves to our views 
and wishes. Now it is in this refractoriness that we dis¬ 
cern the seed and principle of physical evil, as far as it 
arises from that which is external to us. 
Civil evils, or the evils of civil life, are much more easily 
disposed of than physical evils; because they are, in truth, 
of much less magnitude, and also because they result, by a 
kind of necessity, not only from the constitution of our na¬ 
ture, but from a part of that constitution which no one 
would wish to see altered. The case is this: Mankind 
will in every country breed up to a certain point of distress. 
That point may be different in different countries or ages 
according to the established usages of life in each. It will 
also shift upon the scale, so as to admit of a greater or less 
number of inhabitants, according as the quantity of provi¬ 
sion, which is either produced in the country, or supplied 
to it from other countries, may happen to vary. But there 
must always be such a point, and the species will always 
breed up to it. The order of generation proceeds by some¬ 
thing like a geometrical progression. The increase of 
provision, under circumstances even the most advanta¬ 
geous, can only assume the form of an arithmetic series 
Whence it follows, that the population will always overtake 
he provision, will pass beyond the line of plenty, and will 
