The Fallen Star, or, the History of a False Religion Part 9

But, _thirdly_, in whatever light we view the hypothesis, it seems exposed to a similar objection, namely, of explaining nothing in its application, while it is wholly gratuitous in itself. It a.s.sumes, of course, that creation was the act of the good Being; and it also a.s.sumes that Being's goodness to have been perfect, though his power is limited.

Then as he must have known the existence of the evil principle and foreseen the certainty of misery being occasioned by his existence, why did he voluntarily create sentient beings, to put them, in some respects at least, under the evil one's power, and thus be exposed to suffering?

The good Being, according to this theory, is the remote cause of the evil which is endured, because but for his act of creation the evil Being could have had, no subjects whereon to work mischief; so that the hypothesis wholly fails in removing, by more than one step, the difficulty which it was invented to solve.

_Fourthly_, there is no advantage gained to the argument by supposing two Beings, rather than one Being of a mixed nature. The facts lead to this supposition just as naturally as to the hypothesis of two principles. The existence of the evil Being is as much a detraction from the power of the good one, as if we only at once suppose the latter to be of limited power, and that he prefers making and supporting creatures who suffer much less than they enjoy, to making no creatures at all. The supposition that he made them as happy as he could, and that not being able to make them less miserable, he yet perceived that upon the whole their existence would occasion more happiness than if they never had any being at all, will just account for the phenomena as well as the Manichean theory, and will as little as that theory a.s.sume any malevolence in the power which created and preserved the universe. If, however, it be objected that this hypothesis leaves unexplained the fetters upon the good Being's power, the answer is obvious; it leaves those fetters not at all less explained than the Manichean theory does; for that theory gives no explanation of the existence of a counteracting principle, and it a.s.sumes both an antagonistic power, to limit the Deity's power, and a malevolent principle to set the antagonistic power in motion; whereas our supposition a.s.sumes no malevolence at all, but only a restraint upon the divine power.

_Fifthly_, this leads us to another and most formidable objection.

To conceive the eternal existence of one Being infinite in power, "self-created and creating all others," is by no means impossible.

Indeed, as everything must have had a cause, nothing we see being by possibility self-created, we naturally mount from particulars to generals, until finally we rise to the idea of a first cause, uncreated, and self-existing, and eternal. If the phenomena compels us to affix limits to his goodness, we find it impossible to conceive limits to the power of a creative, eternal, self-existing principle. But even supposing we could form the conception of such a Being having his power limited as well as his goodness, still we can conceive no second Being independent of him. This would necessarily lead to the supposition of some third Being, above and antecedent to both, and the creator of both--the real first cause--and then the whole question would be to solve over again,--Why these two antagonistic Beings were suffered to exist by the great Being of all?

The Manichean doctrine, then, is exposed to every objection to which a theory can be obnoxious. It is gratuitous; it is inapplicable to the facts; it supposes more causes than are necessary; it fails to explain the phenomena, leaving the difficulties exactly where it found them.

Nevertheless, such is the theory, how easily soever refuted when openly avowed and explicitly stated, which in various disguises appears to pervade the explanations, given of the facts by most of the other systems; nay, to form, secretly and unacknowledged, their princ.i.p.al ground-work. For it really makes very little difference in the matter whether we are to account for evil by holding that the Deity has created as much happiness as was consistent with "the nature of things," and has taken every means of avoiding all evil except "where it necessarily existed" or at once give those limiting influences a separate and independent existence, and call them by a name of their own, which is the Manichean hypothesis.

The most remarkable argument on this subject, and the most distinguished both for its clear and well ordered statement, and for the systematic shape which it a.s.sumes, is that of Archbishop King. It is the great text-book of those who study this subject; and like the famous legal work of Littleton, it has found an expounder yet abler and more learned than the author himself. Bishop Law's commentary is full of information, of reasoning and of explication; nor can we easily find anything valuable upon the subject which is not contained in the volumes of that work. It will, however, only require a slight examination of the doctrines maintained by these learned and pious men, to satisfy us that they all along either a.s.sume the thing to be proved, or proceed upon suppositions quite inconsistent with the infinite power of the Deity--the only position which raises a question, and which makes the difficulty that requires to be solved.

According to all the systems as well as this one, evil is of two kinds--physical and moral. To the former cla.s.s belong all the sufferings to which sentient beings are exposed from the qualities and affections of matter independent of their own acts; the latter cla.s.s consists of the sufferings of whatever kind which arise from their own conduct. This division of the subject, however, is liable to one serious objection; it comprehends under the second head a cla.s.s of evils which ought more properly to be ranged under the first. Nor is this a mere question of cla.s.sification: it affects the whole scope of the argument. The second of the above-mentioned cla.s.ses comprehends both the physical evils which human agency causes, but which it would have no power to cause unless the qualities of matter were such as to produce pain, privation and death; and also the moral evil of guilt which may possibly exist independent of material agency, but which, whether independent or not upon that physical action, is quite separable from it, residing wholly in the mind. Thus a person who destroys the life of another produces physical evil by means of the const.i.tution of matter, and moral evil is the source of his wicked action. The true arrangement then is this: Physical evil is that which depends on the const.i.tution of matter, or only is so far connected with the const.i.tution of mind as that the nature and existence of a sentient being must be a.s.sumed in order to its mischief being felt. And this physical evil is of two kinds; that which originates in human action, and that which is independent of human action, befalling us from the unalterable course of nature. Of the former cla.s.s are the pains, privations and destruction inflicted by men one upon another; of the latter cla.s.s are diseases, old age and death.

Moral evil consists in the crimes, whether of commission or omission, which men are guilty of--including under the latter head those sufferings which we endure from ill-regulated minds through want of fort.i.tude or self-control. It is clear that as far as the question of the origin of evil is concerned, the first of these two cla.s.ses, physical evil, depends upon the properties of matter, and the last upon those of mind. The second as well as the first subdivision of the physical cla.s.s depends upon matter; because, however ill-disposed the agent's mind may be, he could inflict the mischief only in consequence of the const.i.tution of matter. Therefore, the Being, who created matter enabled him to perpetrate the evil, even admitting that this Being did not, by creating the mind also give rise to the evil disposition; and admitting that, as far as regards this disposition it has the same origin with the evil of the second cla.s.s, or moral evil, the acts of a rational agent.

It is quite true that many reasoners refuse to allow any distinction between the evil produced by natural causes and the evils caused by rational agents, whether as regards their own guilt, or the mischief it caused to others. Those reasoners deny that the creation of man's will and the endowing it with liberty explains anything; they hold that the creation of a mind whose will is to do evil, amounts to the same thing, and belongs to the same cla.s.s, with the creation of matter whose nature is to give pain and misery. But this position, which involves the doctrine of necessity, must, at the very least, admit of one modification. Where no human agency whatever is interposed, and the calamity comes without any one being to blame for it, the mischief seems a step, and a large step, nearer the creative or the superintending cause, because it is, as far as men go, altogether inevitable. The main tendency of the argument, therefore, is confined to physical evil; and this has always been found the most difficult to account for, that is to reconcile with the government of a perfectly good and powerful Being.

It would indeed be very easily explained, and the reconcilement would be readily made, if we were at liberty to suppose matter independent in its existence, and in certain qualities, of the divine control; but this would be to suppose the Deity's power limited and imperfect, which is just one horn of the Epicurean dilemma, _"Aut vult et non potest;"_ and in a.s.suming this, we do not so much beg the question as wholly give it up and admit we cannot solve the difficulty. Yet obvious as this is, we shall presently see that the reasoners who have undertaken the solution, and especially King and Law, under such phrases as "the nature of things," and "the laws of the material universe," have been constantly, through the whole argument, guilty of this _pet.i.tio principii_ (begging the question), or rather this abandonment of the whole question, and never more so than at the very moment when they complacently plumed themselves upon having overcome the difficulty.

Having premised these observations for the purpose of clearing the ground and avoiding confusion in the argument, we may now consider that Archbishop King's theory is in both its parts; for there are in truth two distinct explanations, the one resembling an argument _a priori_, the other an argument _a posteriori_. It is, however, not a little remarkable that Bishop Law, in the admirable abstract or a.n.a.lysis which he gives of the Archbishop's treatise at the end of his preface, begins with the second branch, omitting all mention of the first, as if he considered it to be merely introductory matter; and yet his fourteenth note (t. cap. I s. 3.) shows that he was aware of its being an argument wholly independent of the rest of the reasonings; for he there says that the author had given one demonstration _a priori_, and that no difficulties raised by an examination of the phenomena, no objection _a posteriori_, ought to overrule it, unless these difficulties are equally certain and clear with the demonstration, and admit of no solution consistent with that demonstration.

The necessity of a first cause being shown, and it being evident that therefore this cause is uncreated and self-existent, and independent of any other, the conclusion is next drawn that its power must be infinite.

This is shown by the consideration that there is no other antecedent cause, and no other principle which was not created by the first cause, and consequently which was not of inferior power; therefore, there is nothing which can limit the power of the first cause; and there being no limiter or restrainer, there can be no limitation or restriction.

Again, the infinity of the Deity's power is attempted to be proved in another way.

The number of possible things is infinite; but every possibility implies a power to do the possible thing; and as one possible thing implies a power to do it, an infinite number of possible things implies an infinite power. Or as Descartes and his followers put it, we can have no idea of anything that has not either an actual or a possible existence; but we have an idea of a Being of infinite perfection; therefore, he must actually exist; for otherwise there would be one perfection wanting, and so he would not be infinite, which he either is actually or possibly. It is needless to remark that this whole argument, whatever may be said of the former one, is a pure fallacy, and a _pet.i.tio principii_ throughout. The Cartesian form of it is the most glaringly fallacious, and indeed exposes itself; for by that reasoning we might prove the existence of a fiery dragon or any other phantom of the brain.

But even King's more concealed sophism is equally absurd. What ground is there for saying that the number of possible things is infinite? He adds, "at least in power," which means either nothing or only that we have the power of conceiving an infinite number of possibilities. But because we can conceive or fancy an infinity of possibilities, does it follow that there actually exists this infinity? The whole argument is unworthy of a moment's consideration. The other is more plausible, that restriction implies a restraining power. But even this is not satisfactory when closely examined. For although the first cause must be self-existent and of eternal duration, we only are driven by the necessity of supposing a cause whereon all the argument rests, to suppose one capable of causing all that actually exists; and, therefore, to extend this inference and suppose that the cause is of infinite power seems gratuitous. Nor is it necessary to suppose another power limiting its efficacy, if we do not find it necessary to suppose its own const.i.tution and essence such as we term infinitely powerful. However, after noticing this manifest defect in the fundamental part of the argument, that which infers infinite power, let us for the present a.s.sume the position to be proved either by these or by any other reasons, and see if the structure raised upon it is such as can stand the test of examination.

Thus, then, an infinitely powerful Being exists, and he was the creator of the universe; but to incline him towards the creation there could be no possible motive of happiness to himself, and he must, says King, have either sought his own happiness or that of the universe which he made.

Therefore his own ideas must have been the communication of happiness to the creature. He could only desire to exercise his attributes without, or eternally to himself, which before creating other beings he could not do. But this could only gratify his nature, which wants nothing, being perfect in itself, by communicating his goodness and providing for the happiness of other sentient beings created by him for this purpose.

Therefore, says King, "it manifestly follows that the world is as well as it could be made by infinite power and goodness; for since the exercise of the divine power and the communication of his goodness are the ends, for which the world is formed, there is no doubt but G.o.d has attained these ends." And again, "If then anything inconvenient or incommodious be now, or was from the beginning in it, that certainly could not be hindered or removed even by infinite power, wisdom and goodness."

Now certainly no one can deny, that if G.o.d be infinitely powerful and also infinitely good, it must follow that whatever looks like evil, either is not really evil, or that it is such as infinite power could not avoid. This is implied in the very terms of the hypothesis. It may also be admitted that if the Deity's only object in his dispensation be the happiness of his creatures, the same conclusion follows even without a.s.suming his nature to be infinitely good; for we admit what, for the purpose of the argument, is the same thing, namely, that there entered no evil into his design in creating or maintaining the universe. But all this really a.s.sumes the very thing to be proved. King gets over the difficulty and reaches his conclusion by saying, "The Deity could have only one of two objects--his own happiness or that of his creatures."--The skeptic makes answer, "He might have another object, namely, the misery of his creatures;" and then the whole question is, whether or not he had this other object; or, which is the same thing, whether or not his nature is perfectly good. It must never be forgotten that unless evil exists there is nothing to dispute about--the question falls. The whole difficulty arises from the admission that evil exists, or what we call evil, exists. From this we inquire whether or not the author of it can be perfectly benevolent? or if he be, with what view he has created it? This a.s.sumes him to be infinitely powerful, or at least powerful enough to have prevented the evil; but indeed we are now arguing with the Archbishop on the supposition that he has proved the Deity to be of infinite power. The skeptic rests upon his dilemma, and either alternative, limited power or limited goodness, satisfies him.

It is quite plain, therefore, that King has a.s.sumed the thing to be proved in his first argument, or argument _a priori_. For he proceeds upon the postulates that the Deity is infinitely good, and that he only had human happiness in view when he made the world. Either supposition would have served his purpose; and making either would have been taking for granted the whole matter in dispute. But he has a.s.sumed both; and it must be added, he has made his a.s.sumption of both as if he was only laying down a single position. This part of the work is certainly more slovenly than the rest. It is the third section of the first chapter.

It is certainly not from any reluctance to admit the existence of evil that the learned author and his able commentator have been led into this inconclusive course of reasoning. We shall nowhere find more striking expositions of the state of things in this respect, nor more gloomy descriptions of our condition, than in their celebrated work. "Whence so many, inaccuracies," says the Archbishop, "in the work of a most good and powerful G.o.d? Whence that perpetual war between the very elements, between animals, between men? Whence errors, miseries and vices, the constant companions of human life from its infancy? Whence good to evil men, evil to the good? If we behold anything irregular in the work of men, if any machine serves not the end it was made for, if we find something in it repugnant to itself or others, we attribute that to the ignorance, impatience or malice of the workman. But since these qualities have no place in G.o.d, how come they to have place in anything?

Or why does G.o.d suffer his works to be deformed by them?"--Chap. ii. s.

3. Bishop Law, in his admirable preface, still more cogently puts the case: "When I inquire how I got into the world, and came to be what I am, I am told that an absolutely perfect being produced me out of nothing, and placed me here on purpose to communicate some part of his happiness to me, and to make me in some manner like himself. This end is not obtained--the direct contrary appears--I find myself surrounded with nothing but perplexity, want and misery--by whose fault I know not--how to better myself I cannot tell. What notions of good and goodness can this afford me? What ideas of religion? What hopes of a future state?

For if G.o.d's aim in producing me be entirely unknown, if it be either his glory (as some will have it), which my present state is far from advancing, nor mine own good, which the same is equally inconsistent with, how know I what I have to do here, or indeed in what manner I must endeavor to please him? Or why should I endeavor it at all? For if I must be miserable in this world, what security have I that I shall not be so in another too (if there be one), since if it were the will of my Almighty Creator, I might (for aught I see) have been happy in both."--Pref. viii. The question thus is stated. The difficulty is raised in its full and formidable magnitude by both these learned and able men; that they have signally failed to lay it by the argument _a priori_ is plain. Indeed, it seems wholly impossible ever to answer by an argument _a priori_ any objection whatever which arises altogether out of the facts made known to us by experience alone, and which are therefore in the nature of contingent truths, resting upon contingent evidence, while all demonstrations _a priori_ must necessarily proceed upon mathematical truths. Let us now see if their labors have been more successful in applying to the solution of the difficulty the reasoning _a posteriori._

Archbishop King divides evil into three kinds--imperfection, natural evil and moral evil--including under the last head all the physical evils that arise from human actions, as well as the evils which consists in the guilt of those actions.

The existence of imperfection is stated to be necessary, because everything which is created and not self-existent must be imperfect; consequently every work of the Deity, in other words, everything but the Deity himself, must have imperfection in its nature. Nor is the existence of some beings which are imperfect any interference with the attributes of others. Nor the existence of beings with many imperfections any interference with others having pre-eminence. The goodness of the Deity therefore is not impugned by the existence of various orders of created beings more or less approaching to perfection.

His creating none at all would have left the universe less admirable and containing less happiness than it now does. Therefore, the act of mere benevolence which called those various orders into existence is not impeached in respect of goodness any more than of power by the variety of the attributes possessed by the different beings created.

He now proceeds to grapple with the real difficulty of the question. And it is truly astonis.h.i.+ng to find this acute metaphysician begin with an a.s.sumption which entirely begs that question. As imperfection, says he, arises from created beings having been made out of nothing, so natural evils arise "from all natural things having a relation to matter, and on this account being necessarily subject to natural evil." As long as matter is subject to motion, it must be the subject of generation and corruption. "These and all other natural evils," says the author, "are so necessarily connected with the material origin of things that they cannot be separated from it, and thus the structure of the world either ought not to have been formed at all, or these evils must have been tolerated without any imputation on the divine power and goodness."

Again, he says, "corruption could not be avoided without violence done to the laws of motion and the nature of matter." Again, "All manner of inconveniences could not be avoided because of the imperfection of matter and the nature of motion. That state of things were therefore preferable which was attained with the fewest and the least inconveniences." Then follows a kind of menace, "And who but a very rash, indiscreet person will affirm that G.o.d has not made choice of this?"--when every one must perceive that the bare propounding of the question concerning evil calls upon us to exercise this temerity and commit this indiscretion.--Chap. iv. s. I, div. 7. He then goes into more detail as to particular cases of natural evil; but all are handled in the same way. Thus death is explained by saying that the bodies of animals are a kind of vessels which contain fluids in motion, and being broken, the fluids are spilt and the motions cease; "because by the native imperfection of matter it is capable of dissolution, and the spilling and stagnation must necessarily follow, and with it animal life must cease."--Chap. iv. s. 3. Disease is dealt with in like manner. "It could not be avoided unless animals had been made of a quite different frame and const.i.tution."--Chap. iv. s. 7. The whole reasoning is summed up in the concluding section of this part, where the author somewhat triumphantly says, "The difficult question then, whence comes evil? is not unanswerable. For it arises from the very nature and const.i.tution of created beings, and could not be avoided without a contradiction."--Chap. iv. s. 9. To this the commentary of Bishop Law adds (Note 4i), "that natural evil has been shown to be, in every case, unavoidable, without introducing into the system a greater evil."

It is certain that many persons, led away by the authority of a great name, have been accustomed to regard this work as a text-book, and have appealed to Archbishop King and his learned commentator as having solved the question. So many men have referred to the _Principia_ as showing the motions of the heavenly bodies, who never read, or indeed could read, a page of that immortal work. But no man ever did open it who could read it and find himself disappointed in any one particular; the whole demonstration is perfect; not a link is wanting; nothing is a.s.sumed. How different the case here! We open the work of the prelate and find it from the first to last a chain of gratuitous a.s.sumptions, and, of the main point, nothing whatever is either proved or explained.

Evil arises, he says, from the nature of matter. Who doubts it? But is not the whole question why matter was created with such properties as of necessity to produce evil? It was impossible, says he, to avoid it consistently with the laws of motion and matter. Unquestionably; but the whole dispute is upon those laws. If indeed the laws of nature, the existing const.i.tution of the material world, were a.s.sumed as necessary, and as binding upon the Deity, how is it possible that any question ever could have been raised? The Deity having the power to make those laws, to endow matter with that const.i.tution, and having also the power to make different laws and to give matter another const.i.tution, the whole question is, how his choosing to create the present existing order of things--the laws and the const.i.tution which we find to prevail--can be reconciled with perfect goodness. The whole argument of the Archbishop a.s.sumes that matter and its laws are independent of the Deity; and the only conclusion to which the inquiry leads us is that the Creator has made a world with as little of evil in it as the nature of things,--that is, as the laws of nature and matter--allowed him; which is nonsense, if those laws were made by him, and leaves the question where it was, or rather solves it by giving up the omnipotence of the Creator, if these laws were binding upon him.

It must be added, however, that Dr. King and Dr. Law are not singular in pursuing this most inconclusive course of reasoning.

Thus Dr. J. Clarke, in his treatise on natural evil, quoted by Bishop Law (Note 32), shows how mischiefs arise from the laws of matter; and says this could not be avoided "without altering those primary laws, i. e., making it something else than what it is, or changing it into another form; the result of which would only be to render it liable to evils of another kind against which the same objections would equally lie." So Dr. J. Burnett, in his discourses on evil, at the Boyle Lecture (vol. ii. P. 201), conceives that he explains death by saying that the materials of which the body is composed "cannot last beyond seventy years, or thereabouts, and it was originally intended that we should die at that age." Pain, too, he imagines is accounted for by observing that we are endowed with feelings, and that if we could not feel pain, so neither could we pleasure (p. 202). Again, he says that there are certain qualities which "in the nature of things matter is incapable of"

(p. 207). And as if he really felt the pressure of this difficulty, he at length comes to this conclusion, that life is a free gift, which we had no right to exact, and which the Deity lay under no necessity to grant, and therefore we must take it with the conditions annexed (p.

210); which is undeniably true, but is excluding the discussion and not answering the question proposed. Nor must it be forgotten that some reasoners deal strangely with the facts. Thus Derham, in his _Physico-Theology_, explaining the use of poison in snakes, first desires us to bear in mind that many venomous ones are of use medicinally in stubborn diseases, which is not true, and if it were, would prove nothing, unless the venom, not the flesh, were proved to be medicinal; and then says, they are "scourges upon ungrateful and sinful men;" adding the truly astounding absurdity, "that the nations which know not G.o.d are the most annoyed with noxious reptiles and other pernicious creatures." (Book ix. c. I); which if it were true would raise a double difficulty, by showing that one people was scourged because another had neglected to preach the gospel among them. Dr. J.

Burnett, too, accounts for animals being suffered to be killed as food for man, by affirming that they thereby gain all the care which man is thus led to bestow upon them, and so are, on the whole, the better for being eaten. (Boyle Lecture, II. 207). But the most singular error has perhaps been fallen into by Dr. Sherlock, and the most, unhappy--which yet Bishop Law has cited as a sufficient answer to the objection respecting death: "It is a great instrument of government, and makes men afraid of committing such villanies as the laws of their country have made capital." (Note 34). So that the greatest error in the criminal legislation of all countries forms part of the divine providence, and man has at length discovered, by the light of reason, the folly and the wickedness of using an instrument expressly created by divine Omniscience to be abused!

The remaining portion of King's work, filling the second volume of Bishop Law's edition, is devoted to the explanation of Moral Evil; and here the gratuitous a.s.sumption of the "nature of things," and the "laws of nature," more or less pervade the whole as in the former parts of the Inquiry.

The fundamental position of the whole is, that man having been endowed with free will, his happiness consists in making due elections, or in the right exercise of that free will. Five causes are then given of undue elections, in which of course his misery consists as far as that depends on himself; these causes are error, negligence, over-indulgence of free choice, obstinacy or bad habit, and the importunity of natural appet.i.tes; which last, it must in pa.s.sing be remarked, belongs to the head of physical evil, and cannot be a.s.sumed in this discussion without begging the question. The great difficulty is then stated and grappled with, namely, how to reconcile these undue elections with divine goodness. The objector states that free will might exist without the power of making undue elections, he being suffered to range, as it were, only among lawful objects of choice. But the answer to this seems sound, that such a will would only be free in name; it would be free to choose among certain things, but would not be free-will. The objector again urges, that either the choice is free and may fall upon evil objects, against the goodness of G.o.d, or it is so restrained as only to fall on good objects. Against freedom of the will King's solution is, that more evil would result from preventing these undue elections than from suffering them, and so the Deity has only done the best he could in the circ.u.mstances; a solution obviously liable to the same objection as that respecting Natural Evil. There are three ways, says the Archbishop, in which undue elections might have been prevented; not creating a free agent--constant interference with his free-will--removing him to another state where he would not be tempted to go astray in his choice. A fourth mode may, however, be suggested--creating a free-agent without any inclination to evil, or any temptation from external objects. When our author disposes of the second method, by stating that it a.s.sumes a constant miracle, as great in the moral as altering the course of the planets hourly would be in the material universe, nothing can be more sound or more satisfactory. But when he argues that our whole happiness consists in a consciousness of freedom of election, and that we should never know happiness were we restrained in any particular, it seems wholly inconceivable how he should have omitted to consider the prodigious comfort of a state in which we should be guaranteed against any error or impropriety of choice; a state in which we should both be unable to go astray and always feel conscious of that security. He, however, begs the question most manifestly in dealing with the two other methods stated, by which undue elections might have been precluded. "You would have freedom," says he, "without any inclination to sin; but it may justly be doubted if this is possible _in the present state of things_," (chap. v. s. 5, sub. 2); and again, in answering the question why G.o.d did not remove us into another state where no temptation could seduce us, he says: "It is plain that _in the present state of things_ it is impossible for men to live without natural evils or the danger of sinning." (_Ib_.) Now the whole question arises upon the const.i.tution of the present state of things. If that is allowed to be inevitable, or is taken as a datum in the discussion, there ceases to be any question at all.

The doctrine of a chain of being is enlarged upon, and with much felicity of ill.u.s.tration. But it only wraps up the difficulty in other words, without solving it. For then the question becomes this--Why did the Deity create such a chain as could not be filled up without misery?

It is, indeed, merely restating the fact of evil existing; for whether we say there is suffering among sentient beings--or the universe consists of beings more or less happy, more or less miserable--or there exists a chain of beings varying in perfection and in felicity--it is manifestly all one proposition. The remark of Bayle upon this view of the subject is really not at all unsound, and is eminently ingenious: "Would you defend a king who should confine all his subjects of a certain age in dungeons, upon the ground that if he did not, many of the cells he had built must remain empty?" The answer of Bishop Law to this remark is by no means satisfactory. He says it a.s.sumes that more misery than happiness exists. Now, in this view of the question, the balance is quite immaterial. The existence of any evil at all raises the question as much as the preponderance of evil over good, because the question conceives a perfectly good Being, and asks how such a Being can have permitted any evil at all. Upon this part of the subject both King and Law have fallen into an error which recent discoveries place in a singularly clear light. They say that the argument they are dealing with would lead to leaving the earth to the brutes without human inhabitants.

But the recent discoveries in Fossil Osteology have proved that the earth, for ages before the last 5,000 or 6,000 years, was left to the lower animals; nay, that in a still earlier period of its existence no animal life at all was maintained upon its surface. So that, in fact, the foundation is removed of the _reductio ad absurdum_ attempted by the learned prelates.

A singular argument is used towards the latter end of the inquiry.

When the Deity, it is said, resolved to create other beings, He must of necessity tolerate imperfect natures in his handiwork, just as he must the equality of a circle's radii when he drew a circle. Who does not perceive the difference? The meaning of the word circle is that the radii are all equal; this equality is a necessary truth. But it is not shown that men could not exist without the imperfections they labor under. Yet this is the argument suggested by these authors while complaining (chap. v. s. 5, sub. 7, div. 7), that Lactantius had not sufficiently answered the Epicurean dilemma; it is the subst.i.tute propounded to supply that father's deficiency.--"When, therefore," says the Archbishop, "matter, motion and free-will are const.i.tuted, the Deity must necessarily permit corruption of things and the abuse of liberty, or something worse, for these cannot be separated without a contradiction, and G.o.d is no more important, because he cannot separate equality of radii from a circle."--Chap. v. s. 5, subs. 7. If he could not have created evil, he would not have been omnipotent; if he would not, he must let his power lie idle; and rejecting evil have rejected all the good. "Thus," exclaims the author with triumph and self-complacency, "then vanishes this Herculean argument which induced the Epicureans to discard the good Deity, and the Manicheans to subst.i.tute an evil one." (_Ib._ subs. 7, _sub. fine._) Nor is the explanation rendered more satisfactory, or indeed more intelligible, by the concluding pa.s.sage of all, in which we are told that "from a conflict of two properties, namely, omnipotence and goodness, evils necessarily arise. These attributes amicably conspire together, and yet restrain and limit each other." It might have been expected from hence that no evil at all should be found to exist. "There is a kind of struggle and opposition between them, whereof the evils in nature bear the shadow and resemblance. Here, then, and no where else, mar we find the primary and most certain rise and origin of evils."

Such is this celebrated work; and it may safely be affirmed that a more complete failure to overcome a great and admitted difficulty--a more unsatisfactory solution of an important question--is not to be found in the whole history of metaphysical science.

Among the authors who have treated of this subject, a high place is justly given to Archdeacon Bulguy, whose work on _Divine Benevolence_ is always referred to by Dr. Paley with great commendation. But certain it is that this learned and pious writer either had never formed to himself a very precise notion of the real question under discussion, namely, the compatibility of the appearances which we see and which we consider as evil, with a Being infinitely powerful as well as good; or he had in his mind some opinions respecting the divine nature, opinions of a limitary kind, which he does not state distinctly, although he constantly suffers them to influence his seasonings. Hence, whenever he comes close to the real difficulty he appears to beg the question. A very few instances of what really pervades the whole work will suffice to show how unsatisfactory its general scope is, although it contains, like the treatise of Dr. King and Dr. Law's Commentary, many valuable observations on the details of the subject.

And first we may perceive that what he terms a _"previous remark,"_ and desires the reader "to carry along through the whole proof of divine benevolence," really contains a statement that _the difficulty is to be evaded and not met._ "An intention of producing good," says he, "will be sufficiently apparent in any particular instance if the thing considered can neither be changed nor taken away without loss or harm, _all other things continuing the same._ Should you suppose _various_ things in the system changed _at once_, you can neither judge of the possibility nor the consequences of the changes, having no degree of experience to direct you." Now a.s.suredly this postulate makes the whole question as easy a one as ever metaphysician or naturalist had to solve. For it is no longer--Why did a powerful and benevolent Being create a world in which there is evil--but only--The world being given, how far are its different arrangements consistent with one another? According to this, the earthquake at Lisbon, Voltaire's favorite instance, destroyed thousands of persons, because it is in the nature of things that subterraneous vapors should explode, and that when houses fall on human beings they should be killed. Then if Dr. Balguy goes to his other argument, on which he often dwells, that if this nature were altered, we cannot possibly tell whether worse might not ensue; this, too, is a.s.suming a limited power in the Deity, contrary to the hypothesis.

It may most justly be said, that if there be any one supposition necessarily excluded from the whole argument, it is the fundamental supposition of the "previous remark," namely, "all other things continuing the same."

But see how this a.s.sumption pervades and paralyzes the whole argument, rendering it utterly inconclusive. The author is to answer an objection derived from the const.i.tution of our appet.i.tes for food, and his reply is, that "we cannot tell how far it was _possible_ for the stomachs and palates of animals to be differently formed, unless by some remedy worse than the disease." Again, upon the question of pain: "How do we know that it was _possible_ for the uneasy sensation to be confined to particular cases?" So we meet the same fallacy under another form, as evil being the result of "general principles." But no one has ever pushed this so far as Dr. Balguy, for he says, "that in a government so conducted, many events are likely to happen contrary to the intention of its author." He now calls in the aid of chance, or accident.--"It is probable," he says, "that G.o.d should be good, for evil is more likely to be _accidental_ than appears from experience in the conduct of men."

Indeed, his fundamental position of the Deity's benevolence is rested upon this foundation, that "pleasures only were intended, and that the pains are accidental consequences, although the means of producing pleasures." The same recourse to accident is repeatedly had. Thus, "the events to which we are exposed in this imperfect state appear to be the _accidental_, not natural, effects of our frame and condition." Now can any one thing be more manifest than that the very first notion of a wise and powerful Being excludes all such a.s.sumptions as things happening contrary to His intention; and that when we use the word chance or accident, which only means our human ignorance of causes, we at once give up the whole question, as if we said, "It is a subject about which we know nothing." So again as to power. "A good design is more _difficult_ to be executed, and therefore more likely to be executed _imperfectly_, than an evil one, that is, with a mixture of effects foreign to the design and opposite to it." This at once a.s.sumes the Deity to be powerless. But a general statement is afterwards made more distinctly to the same effect. "Most sure it is that he can do all things possible. But are we in any degree competent judges of the bounds of possibility?" So again under another form nature is introduced as something different from its author, and offering limits to his power. "It is plainly not the method of nature to obtain her ends instantaneously." Pa.s.sing over such propositions as that "_useless_ evil is a thing never seen," (when the whole question is why the same ends were not attained without evil), and a variety of other subordinate a.s.sumptions contrary to the hypothesis, we may rest with this general statement, which almost every page of Dr. Balguy's book bears out, that the question which he has set himself to solve is anything rather than the real one touching the Origin of Evil; and that this attempt at a solution is as ineffectual as any of those which we have been considering.

Is, then, the question wholly incapable of solution, which all these learned and ingenious men have so entirely failed in solving? Must the difficulty remain forever unsurmounted, and only be approached to discover that it is insuperable? _Must the subject, of all others the most interesting for us to know well, be to us always as a sealed book, of which we can never know anything?_ From the nature of the thing--from the question relating to the operation of a power which, to our limited faculties, must ever be incomprehensible--there seems too much reason for believing that nothing precise or satisfactory ever will be attained by human reason regarding this great argument; and that the bounds which limit our views will only be pa.s.sed when we have quitted the enc.u.mbrances of our mortal state, and are permitted to survey those regions beyond the sphere of our present circ.u.mscribed existence. The other branch of Natural Theology, that which investigates the evidences of Intelligence and Design, and leads us to a clear apprehension of the Deity's power and wisdom, is as satisfactorily cultivated as any other department of science, rests upon the same species of proof, and affords results as precise as they are sublime. This branch will never be distinctly known, and will always so disappoint the inquirer as to render the lights of Revelation peculiarly acceptable, although even those lights leave much of it still involved in darkness--still mysterious and obscure.[2]

Yet let us endeavor to suggest some possible explication, while we admit that nothing certain, nothing entirely satisfactory can be reached. The failure of the great writers whose works we have been contemplating may well teach us humility, make us distrust ourselves, and moderate within us any sanguine hopes of success. But they should not make us wholly despair of at least showing in what direction the solution of the difficulty is to be sought, and whereabouts it will probably be found situated, when our feeble reason shall be strengthened and expanded.

For one cause of their discomfiture certainly has been their aiming too high, attempting a complete solution of a problem which only admitted of approximation, and discussion of limits.

It is admitted on all hands that the demonstration is complete which shows the existence of intelligence and design in the universe. The structure of the eye and ear in exact confirmity to the laws of optics and acoustics, shows as clearly as any experiment can show anything, that the source, cause or origin is common both to the properties of light and the formation of the lenses and retina in the eye--both to the properties of sound and the tympanum, malleus, incus and stapes of the ear. No doubt whatever can exist upon the subject, any more than, if we saw a particular order issued to a body of men to perform certain uncommon evolutions, and afterwards saw the same body performing those same evolutions, we could doubt their having received the order. A designing and intelligent and skillful author of these admirably adapted works is equally a clear inference from the same facts. We can no more doubt it than we can question, when we see a mill grinding corn into flour, that the machinery was made by some one who designed by means of it to prepare the materials of bread. The same conclusions are drawn in a vast variety of other instances, both with respect to the parts of human and other bodies, and with respect to most of the other arrangements of nature. Similar conclusions are also drawn from our consciousness, and the knowledge which it gives us of the structure of the mind.[3] Thus we find that attention quickens memory and enables us to recollect; and that habit renders all exertions and all acquisitions easy, beside having the effect of alleviating pain.

But when we carry our survey into other parts, whether of the natural or moral system, we cannot discover any design at all. We frequently perceive structures the use of which we know nothing about; parts of the animal frame that apparently have no functions to perform--nay, that are the source of pain without yielding any perceptible advantage; arrangements and movements of bodies which are of one particular kind, and yet we are quite at a loss to discern any reason why they might not have been of many other descriptions; operations of nature that seem to serve no purpose whatever; and other operations and other arrangements, chosen equally without any beneficial view, and yet which often give rise to much apparent confusion and mischief. Now, the question is, _first_, whether in any one of these cases of arrangement and structures with no visible object at all, we can for a moment suppose that there really is no object answered, or only conceive that we have been unable to discover it? _Secondly_, whether in the cases where mischief sometimes is perceived, and no other purpose appears to be effected, we do not almost as uniformly lay the blame on our own ignorance, and conclude, not that the arrangement was made without any design, and that mischief arises without any contriver, but that if we knew the whole case we should find a design and contrivance, and also that the apparent mischief would sink into the general good? It is not necessary to admit, for our present purpose, this latter proposition, though it brings us closer to the matter in hand; it is sufficient for the present to admit, what no one doubts, that when a part of the body, for instance, is discovered, to which, like the spleen, we cannot a.s.sign any function in the animal system, we never think of concluding that it is made for no use, but only that we have as yet not been able to discover its use.

Now, let us ask, why do we, without any hesitation whatever, or any exception whatever, always and immediately arrive at this conclusion respecting intelligence and design? Nothing could be more unphilosophical, nay, more groundless, than such a process of reasoning, if we had only been able to trace design in one or two instances; for instance, if we found only the eye to show proofs of contrivance, it would be wholly gratuitous, when we saw the ear, to a.s.sume that it was adapted to the nature of sound, and still more so, if, on examination, we perceived it bore no perceptible relation to the laws of acoustics.

The proof of contrivance in one particular is nothing like a proof, nay, does not even furnish the least presumption of contrivance in other particulars; because, _a priori_, it is just as easy to suppose one part of nature to be designed for a purpose, and another part, nay, all other parts, to be formed at random and without any contrivance, as to suppose that the formation of the whole is governed by design. Why, then, do we, invariably and undoubtedly, adopt the course of reasoning which has been mentioned, and never for a moment suspect anything to be formed without some reason--some rational purpose? The only ground of this belief is, that we have been able distinctly to trace design in so vast a majority of cases as leaves us no power of doubting that, if our faculties had been sufficiently powerful, or our investigation sufficiently diligent, we should also have been able to trace it in those comparatively few instances respecting which we still are in the dark.

It may be worth while to give a few instances of the ignorance in which we once were of design in some important arrangements of nature, and of the knowledge which we now possess to show the purpose of their formation. Before Sir Isaac Newton's optical discoveries, we could not tell why the structure of the eye was so complex, and why several lenses and humors were required to form a picture of objects upon the retina.

Indeed, until Dolland's subsequent discovery of the achromatic effect of combining various gla.s.ses, and Mr. Blair's still more recent experiments on the powers of different refracting media, we were not able distinctly to perceive the operation and use of the complicacy in the structure of the eye. We now well understand its nature, and are able to comprehend how that which had at one time, nay, for ages, seemed to be an unnecessary complexity; forms the most perfect of all optical instruments, and according to the most certain laws of refraction and of dispersion.

So, too, we had observed for some centuries the forms of the orbits in which the heavenly bodies move, and we had found these to be ellipses with a very small eccentricity. But why this was the form of those orbits no one could even conjecture. If any person, the most deeply skilled in mathematical science, and the most internally convinced of the universal prevalence of design and contrivance in the structure of the universe, had been asked what reason there was for the planets moving in ellipses so, nearly approaching to circles, he could not have given any good reason, at least beyond a guess. The force of gravitation, even admitting that to be, as it were, a condition of the creation of matter, would have made those bodies revolve in ellipses of any degree of eccentricity just as well, provided the angle and the force of projection had been varied. Then, why was this form rather, than any other chosen? No one knew; yet no one doubted that there was ample reason for it. Accordingly the sublime discoveries of Lagrange and La Place have shown us that this small eccentricity is one material element in the formula by which it is shown that all the irregularities of the system are periodical, and that the deviation never can exceed a certain amount on either hand.