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Title: The Fallen Star

Author: E. L. Bulwer

Title: A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil

Author: Lord Brougham

Release Date: August, 2005  [EBook #8654]
[This file was first posted on July 30, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE FALLEN STAR ***




E-text prepared by David Deley




THE FALLEN STAR, or, THE HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION

by E. L. Bulwer

AND

A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

by Lord Brougham







PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

RELIGION, says Noah Webster in his _American Dictionary of the
English Language_, is derived from "Religo, to bind anew;" and,
in this _History of a False Religion_, our author has shown how
easily its votaries were insnared, deceived, and mentally bound
in a labyrinth of falsehood and error, by a designing knave, who
established a new religion and a new order of priesthood by
imposing on their ignorance and credulity.

The history of the origin of one supernatural religion will,
with slight alterations, serve to describe them all. Their claim
to credence rests on the exhibition of so-called miracles--that
is, on a violation of the laws of nature,--for, if religions
were founded on the demonstrated truths of science, there would
be no mystery, no supernaturalism, no miracles, no skepticism,
no false religion. We would have only verified truths and
demonstrated facts for the basis of our belief. But this simple
foundation does not satisfy the unreasoning multitude. They
demand signs, portents, mysteries, wonders and miracles for
their faith and the supply of prophets, knaves and impostors has
always been found ample to satisfy this abnormal demand of
credulity.

Designing men, even at the present day, find little difficulty
in establishing new systems of faith and belief. Joseph Smith,
who invented the Mormon religion, had more followers and
influence in this country at his death, than the Carpenter's Son
obtained centuries ago from the unlettered inhabitants of
Palestine; and yet Smith achieved his success among educated
people in this so-called enlightened age, while Jesus taught in
an age of semi-barbarism and faith, when both Jews and Pagans
asserted and believed that beasts, birds, reptiles and even
fishes understood human language, were often gifted with human
speech, and sometimes seemed to possess even more than ordinary
human intelligence.

They taught that the serpent, using the language of sophistry,
beguiled Eve in Eden, who in turn corrupted Adam, her first and
only husband. At the baptism of Jesus by John in the river
Jordan, the voice of a dove resounded in the heavens, saying,
quite audibly and distinctly, "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee
I am well pleased." Balaam disputed with his patient beast of
burden, on their celebrated journey in the land of Moab, and the
ass proved wiser in the argument that ensued than the inspired
prophet who bestrode him, The great fish Oannes left his native
element and taught philosophy to the Chaldeans on dry land.
One reputable woman, of Jewish lineage,--the mother of an
interesting family--was changed to a pillar of salt in Sodom
while another female of great notoriety known to fame as the
celebrated "Witch of Endor," raised Samuel from his grave in
Ramah. Saint Peter found a shilling in the mouth of a fish which
he caught in the Sea of Galilee, and this lucky incident enabled
the impecunious apostle to pay the "tribute money" in Capernaum.
Another famous Israelite,--so it is said,--broke the record of
balloon ascensions in Judea, and ascended into heaven in a
chariot of fire.

In an age of ignorance wonders abound, prodigies occur, and
miracles become common, The untaught masses are easily deceived,
and their unreasoning credulity enables them to proudly boast of
their unquestioning faith. When their feelings are excited and
their passions aroused by professional evangelists, they even
profess to believe that which they cannot comprehend; and, in
the satirical language of Bulwer, they endeavor to "_assist
their ignorance by the conjectures of their superstition_."

Among the multitudes of diverse and opposing religions which
afflict mankind, it is self-evident that but one religion may
justly claim the inspiration of truth, and it is equally evident
to all reasoning minds that that religion is the religion of
kindness and humanity,--the religion of noble thoughts and
generous deeds,--which removes the enmities of race and creed,
and "makes the whole world kin!" And which, in its observance is
blessed with sympathy, friendship, happiness and love.

This religion needs no creed, no profession of faith, no
incense, no prayer, no penance, no sacrifice. Its whole duty
consists in comforting the afflicted, assisting the unfortunate,
protecting the helpless, and in honestly fulfilling our duties
to our fellow mortals. In the language of Confucius, the ancient
Chinese Sage, it is simply "to behave to others as I would
require others to behave to me."

"Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," says
Jesus; and in the Epistle of James, we are told that "Pure
Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world."

The same benign and generous conduct is commended in even
grander and nobler language in the lectures to the French
Masonic Lodges: "Love one another, teach one another, help one
another. That is all our doctrine, all our science, all our
law."

It is believed that the learned dissertation of Lord Brougham on
the _Origin of Evil_, which is annexed to this work, will need
no commendation to ensure its careful perusal.

                         PETER ECKLER.





THE FALLEN STAR, or, THE HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION

by E. L. Bulwer




HISTORY OF A FALSE RELIGION.
AN ALLEGORY OF THE STARS.

And the Stars sat, each on his ruby throne, and watched with
sleepless eyes upon the world. It was the night ushering in the
new year, a night on which every star receives from the
archangel that then visits the universal galaxy, its peculiar
charge.

The destinies of men and empires are then portioned forth for
the coming year, and, unconsciously to ourselves, our fates
become minioned to the stars.

A hushed and solemn night is that in which the dark gates of
time open to receive the ghost of the dead year, and the young
and radiant stranger rushes forth from the clouded chasms of
eternity. On that night, it is said that there are given to the
spirits that we see not, a privilege and a power; the dead are
troubled in their forgotten graves, and men feast and laugh,
while demon and angel are contending for their doom.

It was night in heaven; all was unutterably silent, the music of
the spheres had paused, and not a sound came from the angels of
the stars; and they who sat upon those shining thrones were
three thousand and ten, each resembling each.

Eternal youth clothed their radiant limbs with celestial beauty,
and on their faces was written the dread of calm, that fearful
stillness which feels not, sympathizes not with the dooms over
which it broods.

War, tempest, pestilence, the rise of empires, and their fall,
they ordain, they, compass, unexultant and uncompassionate. The
fell and thrilling crimes that stalk abroad when the world
sleeps--the parricide with his stealthy step, and horrent brow,
and lifted knife; the unwifed mother that glides out and looks
behind, and behind, and shudders, and casts her babe upon the
river, and hears the wail, and pities not--the splash, and does
not tremble!

These the starred kings behold--to these they lead the
unconscious step; but the guilt blanches not their lustre,
neither doth remorse wither their unwrinkled youth.

Each star wore a kingly diadem; round the loins of each was a
graven belt, graven with many and mighty signs; and the foot of
each was on a burning ball, and the right arm dropped over the
knee as they bent down from their thrones; they moved not a limb
or feature, save the finger of the right hand, which ever and
anon moved slowly, pointing, and regulated the fates of men as
the hand of the dial speaks the career of time.

One only of the three thousand and ten wore not the same aspect
as his crowned brethren; a star, smaller than the rest, and less
luminous. The countenance of this star was not impressed with
the awful calmness of the others; but there were sullenness and
discontent upon his mighty brow.

And this star said to himself--"Behold, I am created less
glorious than my fellows, and the archangel apportions not to me
the same lordly destinies. Not for me are the dooms of kings and
bards, the rulers of empires, or, yet nobler, the swayers and
harmonists of souls. Sluggish are the spirits and base the lot
of the men I am ordained to lead through a dull life to a
fameless grave. And wherefore?--Is it mine own fault, or is it
the fault which is not mine, that I was woven of beams less
glorious than my brethren? Lo! when the archangel comes, I will
bow not my crowned head to his decrees. I will speak, as the
ancestral Lucifer before me: _he_ rebelled because of his glory,
_I_ because of my obscurity; _he_ from the ambition of pride,
and _I_ from its discontent."

And while the star was thus communing with himself, the upward
heavens were parted as by a long river of light, and adown that
stream swiftly, and without sound, sped the archangel visitor of
the stars; his vast limbs floated in the liquid lustre, and his
outspread wings, each plume the glory of a sun, bore him
noiselessly along; but thick clouds veiled his lustre from the
eyes of mortals, and while above all was bathed in the serenity
of his splendor, tempest and storm broke below over the children
of the earth:

"He bowed the heavens and came down, and darkness was under his
feet."

And the stillness on the faces of the stars became yet more
still, and the awfulness was humbled into awe. Right above their
thrones paused the course of the archangel; and his wings
stretched from east to west, overshadowing with the shadow of
light the immensity of space. Then forth in the shining
stillness, rolled the dread music of his voice: and, fulfilling
the heraldry of god, to each star he appointed the duty and the
charge, and each star bowed his head yet lower as he heard the
fiat, while his throne rocked and trembled at the majesty of the
word. But at last, when each of the brighter stars had, in
succession, received the mandate, and the viceroyalty over the
nations of the earth, the purple and diadems of kings--the
archangel addressed the lesser star as he sat apart from his
fellows

"Behold," said the archangel, "the rude tribes of the north, the
fishermen of the river that flows beneath, and the hunters of
the forests, that darken the mountain-tops with verdure! these
be thy charge, and their destinies thy care. Nor deem thou, O
star of the sullen beams, that thy duties are less glorious than
the duties of thy brethren; for the peasant is not less to thy
master and mine than the monarch; nor doth the doom of empires
rest more upon the sovereign than on the herd. The passions and
the heart are the dominion of the stars--a mighty realm; nor
less mighty beneath the hide that garbs the shepherd, than the
jewelled robes of eastern kings."

Then the star lifted his pale front from his breast, and
answered the archangel:

"Lo!" he said, "ages have past, and each year thou hast
appointed me to the same ignoble charge. Release me, I pray
thee, from the duties that I scorn; or, if thou wilt that the
lowlier race of men be my charge, give unto me the charge not of
many, but of one, and suffer me to breathe into him the desire
that spurns the valleys of life, and ascends its steeps. If the
humble are given to me, let there be amongst them one whom I may
lead on the mission that shall abase the proud; for, behold, O
Appointer of the Stars, as I have sat for uncounted years upon
my solitary throne, brooding over the things beneath, my spirit
hath gathered wisdom from the changes that shift below. Looking
upon the tribes of earth, I have seen how the multitude are
swayed, and tracked the steps that lead weakness into power; and
fain would I be the ruler of one who, if abased, shall aspire to
rule."

As a sudden cloud over the face of noon was the change on the
brow of the archangel.

"Proud and melancholy star," said the herald, "thy wish would
war with the courses of the invisible destiny, that, throned far
above, sways and harmonizes all; the source from which the
lesser rivers of fate are eternally gushing through the heart of
the universe of things. Thinkest thou that thy wisdom, of
itself, can lead the peasant to become a king?"

And the crowned star gazed undauntedly on the face of the
archangel, and answered:

"Yea!--grant me but one trial!"

Ere the archangel could reply, the farthest centre of the heaven
was rent as by a thunderbolt; and the divine herald covered his
face with his hands, and a voice low and sweet, and mild with
the consciousness of unquestionable power, spoke forth to the
repining star:

"The time has arrived when thou mayest have thy wish. Below
thee, upon yon solitary plain, sits a mortal, gloomy as thyself,
who, born under thy influence, may be moulded to thy will."

The voice ceased, as the voice of a dream. Silence was over the
seas of space, and the archangel, once more borne aloft, slowly
soared away into the farther heaven, to promulgate the divine
bidding to the stars of far-distant worlds.

But the soul of the discontented star exulted within itself; and
it said, "I will call forth a king from the valley of the
herdsmen, that shall trample on the kings subject to my fellows,
and render the charge of the contemned star more glorious than
the minions of its favored brethren; thus shall I revenge
neglect--thus shall I prove my claim hereafter to the heritage
of the great of earth!"


At that time, though the world had rolled on for ages, and the
pilgrimage of man had passed through various states of existence,
which our dim traditionary knowledge has not preserved, yet the
condition of our race in the northern hemisphere was then what
_we_, in our imperfect lore, have conceived to be among the
earliest.




FORMING A NEW RELIGION.

By a rude and vast pile of stones, the masonry of arts
forgotten, a lonely man sat at midnight, gazing upon the
heavens. A storm had just passed from the earth--the clouds had
rolled away, and the high stars looked down upon the rapid
waters of the Rhine; and no sound save the roar of the waves and
the dripping of the rain from the mighty trees, was heard around
the ruined pile: the white sheep lay scattered on the plain, and
slumber with them. He sat watching over the herd, lest the foes
of a neighboring tribe seized them unawares, and thus he
coummuned with himself:

"The king sits upon his throne, and is honored by a warrior
race, and the warrior exults in the trophies he has won; the
step of the huntsman is bold upon the mountain-top, and his name
is sung at night round the pine-fires, by the lips of the bard;
and the bard himself hath honor in the hail. But I, who belong
not to the race of kings, and whose limbs can bound not to the
rapture of war, nor scale the eyries of the eagle and the haunts
of the swift stag; whose hand cannot string the harp, and whose
voice is harsh in the song; _I_ have neither honor nor command,
and men bow not the head as I pass along; yet do I feel within
me the consciousness of a great power that should rule my
species--not obey. My eye pierces the secret hearts of men--I
see their thoughts ere their lips proclaim them; and I scorn,
while I see, the weakness and the vices which I never shared. I
laugh at the madness of the warrior--I mock within my soul at
the tyranny of kings. Surely there is something in man's nature
more fitted to command--more worthy of renoun, than the sinews
of the arm, or the swiftness of the feet, or the accident of
birth!"

As Morven, the son of Osslah, thus mused within himself, still
looking at the heavens, the solitary man beheld a star suddenly
shooting from its place, and speeding through the silent air,
till it as suddenly paused right over the midnight river, and
facing the inmate of the pile of stones.

As he gazed upon the star strange thoughts grew slowly over him.
He drank, as it were, from its solemn aspect, the spirit of a
great design. A dark cloud rapidly passing over the earth,
snatched the star from his sight; but left to his awakened mind
the thoughts and the dim scheme that had come to him as he
gazed.

When the sun arose one of his brethren relieved him of his
charge over the herd, and he went away, but not to his father's
home. Musingly he plunged into the dark and leafless recesses of
the winter forest; and shaped out of his wild thoughts, more
palpably and clearly, the outline of his daring hope.

While thus absorbed, he heard a great noise in the forest, and,
fearful lest the hostile tribe of the Alrich might pass that
way, he ascended one of the loftiest pine-trees, to whose
perpetual verdure the winter had not denied the shelter he
sought, and, concealed by its branches, he looked anxiously
forth in the direction whence the noise had proceed.

And IT came--it came with a tramp and a crash, and a crushing
tread upon the crunched boughs and matted leaves that strewed
the soil--it came--it came, the monster that the world now holds
no more--the mighty mammoth of the North!

Slowly it moved in its huge strength along, and its burning eyes
glittered through the gloomy shade: its jaws, falling apart,
showed the grinders with which it snapped asunder the young oaks
of the forest; and the vast tusks, which, curved downward to the
midst of its massive limbs, glistened white and ghastly,
curdling the blood of one destined hereafter to be the dreaded
ruler of the men of that distant age.

The livid eyes of the monster fastened on the form of the
herdsman, even amidst the thick darkness of the pine. It
paused--it glared upon him--its jaws opened, and a low deep
sound, as of gathering thunder, seemed to the son of Osslah as
the knell of a dreadful grave. But after glaring on him for some
moments, it again, and calmly, pursued its terrible way,
crashing the boughs as it marched along, till the last sound of
its heavy tread died away upon his ear.

Ere yet, however, before Morven had summoned the courage to
descend the tree, he saw the shining of arms through the bare
branches of the wood, and presently a small hand of the hostile
Alrich came into sight. He was perfectly hidden from them; and,
listening as they passed him, he heard one say to another:

"The night covers all things; why attack them by day?"

And he who seemed the chief of the band, answered "Right.
To-night, when they sleep in their city, we will upon them. Lo!
they will be drenched in wine, and fall like sheep into our
hands."

"But where, O chief," said a third of the band, shall our men
hide during the day? for there are many hunters among the youth
of the Oestrich tribe, and they might see us in the forest
unawares, and arm their race against our coming."

"I have prepared for that," answered the chief. "Is not the dark
cavern of Oderlin at hand? Will it not shelter us from the eyes
of the victims?"

Then the men laughed, and shouting, they went their way adown
the forest.


When they were gone Morven cautiously descended, and, striking
into a broad path, hastened to a vale that lay between the
forest and the river in which was the city where the chief of
his country dwelt.

As he passed by the warlike men, giants in that day, who
thronged the streets (if streets they might be called), their
half garments parting from their huge limbs, the quiver at their
backs, and the hunting spears in their hands, they laughed and
shouted out, and, pointing to him, cried:

"Morven, the woman! Morven, the cripple! what dost thou among
men?"

For the son of Osslah was small in stature and of slender
strength, and his step had halted from his birth; but he passed
through the warriors unheedingly.

At the outskirts of the city he came upon a tail pile, in which
some old men dwelt by themselves, and counseled the king when
times of danger, or when the failure of the season, the famine,
or the drought, perplexed the ruler, and clouded the savage
fronts of his warrior tribe.

They gave the counsels of experience, and when experience
failed, they drew, in their believing ignorance, assurances and
omens from the winds of heaven, the changes of the moon, and the
flights of the wandering birds. Filled (by the voices of the
elements, and the variety of mysteries which ever shift along
the face of things, unsolved by the wonder which pauses not, the
fear which believes, and that eternal reasoning of all experience,
which assigns causes to effects) with the notion of superior
powers, _they assisted their ignorance by the conjectures of
their superstition_. But as yet they knew no craft and practiced
no _voluntary_ delusion; they trembled too much at the mysteries,
which had created their faith, to seek to belie them. They
counselled as they believed, and the bold dream had never dared
to cross men thus worn and grey with age, of governing their
warriors and their kings by the wisdom of deceit.

The son of Osslah entered the vast pile with a fearless step,
and approached the place at the upper end of the hall, where the
old men sat in conclave.

"How, base-torn and craven limbed!" cried the eldest, who had
been a noted warrior in his day; "darest thou enter unsummoned
amidst the secret councils of the wise men? Knowest thou not,
scatterling! that the penalty is death?"

"Slay me, if thou wilt," answered Morven "but hear!

"As I sat last night in the ruined palace of our ancient kings,
tending, as my father bade me, the sheep that grazed around,
lest the fierce tribe of Alrich should descend unseen from the
mountains upon the herd, a storm came darkly on; and when the
storm, had ceased and I looked above on the sky, I saw a star
descend from its height towards me, and a voice from the star
said, 'Son of Osslah, leave thy herd and seek the council of the
wise men, and say unto them, that they take thee as one of their
number, or that sudden will be the destruction of them, and
theirs.'

"But I had courage to answer the voice, and I said, 'Mock not
the poor son of the herdsman. Behold they will kill me if I
utter so rash a word, for I am poor and valueless in the eyes of
the tribe of Oestrich, and the great in deeds and the grey of
hair alone sit in the council of the wise men.'

"Then the voice said, 'Do my bidding, and I will give thee a
token that thou comest from the powers that sway the seasons and
sail upon the eagles of the winds. Say unto the wise men that
this very night if they refuse to receive thee of their band,
evil shall fall upon them, and the morrow shall dawn in blood.'

"Then the voice ceased, and a cloud passed over the star; and I
communed with myself, and came, O dread fathers, mournfully unto
you. For I feared that ye would smite me because of my bold
tongue, and that ye would, sentence me to the death, in that I
asked what may scarce be given even to the sons of kings."

Then the grim elders looked one at the other and marvelled much,
nor knew they what answer they should make to the herdsman's
son.

At length one of the wise men said, "Surely there must be truth
in the son of Osslah, for he would not dare to falsify the great
lights of heaven. If he had given unto men the words of the
star, verily we might doubt the truth. But who would brave the
vengeance of the gods of night?"

Then the elders shook their heads approvingly; but one answered
and said:

"Shall we take the herdsman's son as our equal? No!"

The name of the man who thus answered was Darvan, and his words
were pleasing to the elders.

But Morven spoke out:

"Of a truth, O councilors of kings! I look not to be an equal
with yourselves. Enough if I tend the gates of your palace, and
serve you as the son of Osslah may serve;" and he bowed his head
humbly as he spoke.

Then said the chief of the elders, for he was wiser than the
others, "But how wilt thou deliver us from the evil that is to
come? Doubtless the star hath informed thee of the service thou
canst render to us if we take thee into our palace, as well as
the ill that will fall on us if we refuse."

Morven answered meekly: "Surely, if thou acceptest thy servant,
the star will teach him that which may requite thee; but as yet
he knows only what he has uttered."

Then the sages bade him withdraw, and they communed with
themselves and they differed much; but though fierce men and
bold at the war cry of a human foe, they shuddered at the
prophecy of a star. So they resolved to take the son of Osslah,
and suffer him to keep the gate of the council-hall.

He heard their decree and towed his head, and went to the gate,
and sat down by it in silence.

And the sun went down in the west, and the first stats of the
twilight began to glimmer, when Morven started front his seat,
and a trembling appeared to seize his limbs. His lips foamed; an
agony and a fear possessed him; he writhed as a man whom the
spear of a foeman has pierced with a mortal wound, and suddenly
fell upon his face on the stony earth.


The elders approached him; wondering, they lifted him up. He
slowly recovered as from a swoon; his eyes rolled wildly.

"Heard ye not the voice of the star?" he said.

And the chief of the elders answered, "Nay, we heard no sound."

Then Morven sighed heavily.

"To me only the word was given. Summon instantly, O councilors
of the king! summon the armed men, and all the youth of the
tribe, and let them take the sword and the spear, and follow thy
servant. For lo! the star hath announced to him that the foe
shall fall into our hands as the wild beast of the forests."

The son of Osslah spoke with the voice of command, and the
elders were amazed.

"Why, pause ye?" he cried. "Do the gods of the night lie? On my
head rest the peril if I deceive ye."

Then the elders communed together; and they went forth and
summoned the men of arms, and all the young of the tribe; and
each man took the sword and the spear, and Morven also. And the
son of Osslah walked first, still looking up at the star; and he
motioned them to be silent, and move with a stealthy step.

So they went through the thickest of the forest, till they came
to the mouth of a great cave, overgrown with aged and matted
trees, and it was called the cave of Oderlin; and he bade the
leaders place the armed men on either side the cave, to the
right and to the left, among the hushes.

So they watched silently till the night deepened, when they
heard a noise in the cave and the sound of feet, and forth came
an armed man; and the spear of Morven pierced him, and be fell
dead at the month of the cave. Another and another, and both
fell! Then loud and long was heard the warcry of Alrich, and
forth poured, as a stream over a narrow bed, the river of armed
men.

And the Sons of Oestrich fell upon them, and the foe were sorely
perplexed and terrified by the suddenness of the battle and the
darkness of the night; and there was a great slaughter.

And when the morning came, the children of Oestrich counted the
slain, and found the leader of Alrich and the chief men of the
tribe amongst them, and great was the joy thereof.

So they went back in triumph to the city, and they carded the
brave son of Osslah on their shoulders, and shouted forth,
"Glory to the servant of the star."

And Morven dwelt in the council of the wise men.


Now the king of the tribe had one daughter, and she was stately
amongst the women of the tribe, and fair to look upon. And
Morven gazed upon her with the eyes of love, but he did not dare
to speak.

Now the son of Osslah laughed secretly at the foolishness of
men; he loved them not, for they had mocked him; he honored them
not, for he had blinded the wisest of their elders.

He shunned their feasts and merriment and lived apart and
solitary.

The austerity of his life increased the mysterious homage which
his commune with the stars had won him, and the boldest of the
warriors bowed his head to the favorite of the gods.

One day he was wandering by the side of the river, and he saw a
large bird of prey rise from the earth, and give chase to a hawk
that had not yet gained the full strength of its wings. From his
youth the solitary Morven had loved to watch, in the great
forests and by the banks of the mighty stream, the habits of the
things which nature had submitted to man; and looking now on the
birds, he said to himself, "Thus is it ever; by cunning or by
strength each thing wishes to master its kind."

While thus, moralizing, the larger bird had stricken down the
hawk, and it fell terrified and panting at his feet.

Morven took the hawk in his hands, and the vulture shrieked
above him, wheeling nearer and nearer to its protected prey; but
Morven scared away the vulture, and placing the hawk in his
bosom, he carried it home, and tended it carefully, and fed it
from his hand until it had regained its strength; and the hawk
knew him, and followed him as a dog.

And Morven said, smiling to himself, "Behold, _the credulous
fools around me put faith in the flight and motions of birds_. I
will teach this poor hawk to minister to my ends."

So he tamed the bird, and tutored it according to its nature;
but he concealed it carefully from others, and cherished it in
secret.

The king of the country was old and like to die, and the eyes of
the tribe were turned to his two sons, nor knew they which was
the worthier to reign.

And Morven passing through the forest one evening, saw the
younger of the two, who was a great hunter, sitting mournfully
under an oak, and looking with musing eyes upon the ground.

"Wherefore musest thou, O swift footed Siror?" said the son of
Osslah; "and wherefore art thou sad?"

"Thou canst not assist me," answered the prince, sternly; "take
thy way."

"Nay," answered Morven, "thou knowest not what thou sayest; am I
not the favorite of the stars?"

"Away, I am no graybeard whom the approach of death makes
doting: talk not to inc of the stars; I know only the things
that my eye sees and my ear drinks in."

"Hush," said Morven, solemnly, and covering his face; "hush!
lest the heavens avenge thy rashness. But, behold, the stars
have given unto me to pierce the secret hearts of others; and I
can tell thee the thoughts of thine."

"Speak out, base-born!"

"Thou art the younger of two, and thy name is less known in war
than the name of thy brother; yet wouldst thou desire to be set
over his head, and to sit at the high seat of thy father?"

The young man turned pale.

"Thou hast truth in thy lips," said he, with a faltering voice.

"Not from me, but from the stars, descends the truth."

"Can the stars grant my wish?"

"They can; let us meet to-morrow." Thus saying, Morven passed
into the forest.

The next day, at noon, they met again.

"I have consulted the gods of night, and they have given me the
power that I prayed for, but on one condition."

"Name it."

"That thou sacrifice thy sister on their altars thou must build
up a heap of stones, and take thy sister into the wood, and lay
her on the pile, and plunge thy sword into her heart; so only
shalt then reign."

The prince shuddered, and started to his feet, and shook his
spear at the pale front of Morven.

"Tremble," said the son of Osslah, with a loud voice. "Hark to
the gods, who threaten thee with death, that thou hast dared to
lift thine arm against their servant!"

As he spoke, the thunder rolled above; for one of the frequent
storms of the early summer was about to break.

The spear dropped from the prince's hand; he sat down and cast
his eyes on the ground.

"Wilt thou do the bidding of the stars, and reign?" said Morven.

"I will!" cried Siror, with a desperate voice.

"This evening, then, when the sun sets, thou wilt lead her
hither, alone; I may not attend thee. Now, let us pile the
stones."

Silently the huntsman bent his vast strength to the fragments of
rock that Morven pointed to him, and they built the altar, and
went their way.


And beautiful is the dying of the great sum when the last song
of the birds fades into the lap of silence; when the islands of
the cloud are bathed in light, and the first star springs up
over the grave of day.


"Whither leadest thou my steps, my brother?" said Gina; "and why
doth thy lip quiver? and why dost thou tarn away thy face?"

"Is not the forest beautiful; doth it not tempt us forth, my
sister?"

"And wherefore are those heaps of stone piled together?"

"Let others answer; _I_ piled them not."

"Thou tremblest brother: we will return."

"Not so; by those stones is a bird that my shaft pierced to-day;
a bird of beautiful plumage that I slew for thee."

"We are by the pile: where hast thou laid the bird?"

"Here!" cried Siror; and he seized the maiden in his arms, and,
casting her on the rude altar, he drew forth his sword to smite
her to the heart.

Right over the stones rose a giant oak, the growth of immemorial
ages; and from the oak, or from the heavens; broke forth a loud
and solemn voice:

"Strike not, son of kings! the stars forbear their own: the
maiden thou shalt not slay; yet shalt thou reign over the race
of Oestrich; and thou shall give Orna as a bride to the favorite
of the stars. Arise, and go thy way!"

The voice ceased: the terror of Orna had overpowered for a time
the springs of life; and Siror bore her home through the wood in
his strong arms.


"Alas!" said Morven, when, at the next day, he again met the
aspiring prince; "alas! the stars have ordained me a lot which
my heart desires not; for I, lonely of life, and crippled of
shape, am insensible to the fires of love; and ever, as thou and
thy tribe know, I have shunned the eyes of women, for the
maidens laughed at my halting step and my sullen features; and
so in my youth I learned betimes to banish all thoughts of love.
But since they told me (as they declared to _thee_), that only
through that marriage, thou, O beloved prince! canst obtain thy
fatter's plumed crown, I yield me to their will."

"But," said the prince, "not until I am king can I give thee my
sister in marriage; for thou knowest that my sire would smite me
to the dust, if I asked him to give the flower of our race to
the son of the herdsman Osslah."

"Thou speakest the words of truth. Go home and fear not: but,
when thou art king, the sacrifice must be made, and Orna mine.
Alas! how can I dare to lift my eyes to her! But so ordain the
dread kings of the night!--Who shall gainsay their word?"

"The day that sees me king, sees Orna thine," answered the
prince.

Morven walked forth, as was his wont, alone; and he said to
himself, "the king is old, yet may he live long between me and
mine hope!" and he began to cast in his mind how he might
shorten the time.

Thus absorbed, he wandered on so unheedingly, that night
advanced, and he had lost his path among the thick woods, and
knew not how to regain his home; so he lay down quietly beneath
a tree, and rested till day dawned.

Then hunger came upon him and he searched among the bushes for
such simple roots as those with which, for he was ever careless
of food, he was used to appease the cravings of nature.

He found, among other more familiar herbs and roots, a red berry
of a sweetish taste, which he had never observed before. He ate
of it sparingly, and had not proceeded far in the wood before he
found his eyes swim, and a deadly sickness come over him. For
several hours he lay convulsed on the ground expecting death;
but the gaunt spareness of his frame, and his unvarying
abstinence, prevailed over the poison, and he recovered slowly,
and after great anguish: but he went with feeble steps back to
the spot where the berries grew, and, plucking several, hid them
in his bosom, and by nightfall regained the city.

The next day he went forth among his father's herds, and seizing
a lamb, forced some of the berries into its stomach, and the
lamb, escaping, ran away, and fell down dead. Then Morven took
some more of the berries and boiled them down, and mixed the
juice with wine, and he gave the wine in secret to one of his
father's servants, and the servant died.

Then Morven sought the king, and coming into his presence alone,
he said unto him, "How fares my lord?"

The king sat on a couch, made of the skins of wolves, and his
eye was glassy and dim; but vast were his aged limbs and huge
was his stature, and he had been taller by a head than the
children of men, and none living could bend the bow he had bent
in youth. Grey, gaunt and worn, as some mighty bones that are
dug at times from the bosom of the earth--a relic of the
strength of old.

And the king said, faintly, and with a ghastly laugh:

"The men of my years fare ill. What avails my strength? Better
had I been born a cripple like thee, so should I have had
nothing to lament in growing old."

The red flash passed over Morven's brow; but he bent humbly--

"O king, what if I could give thee back thy youth? What if I
could restore to thee the vigor which distinguished thee above
the sons of men, when the warriors of Alrich fell like grass
before thy sword?"

Then the king uplifted his dull eyes, and he said:

"What meanest thou, son of Osslah? Surely I hear much of thy
great wisdom, and how thou speakest nightly with the stars. Can
the gods of the night give unto thee the secret to make the old
young?"

"Tempt them not by doubt," said Morven, reverently. "All things
are possible to the rulers of the dark hour; and, lo! the star
that loves thy servant spake to him at the dead of night, and
said, 'Arise, and go unto the king; and tell him that the stars
honor the tribe of Oestrich, and remember how the king bent his
bow against the Sons of Alrich; wherefore, look thou under the
stone that lies to the right of thy dwelling--even beside the
pine-tree, and thou shalt see a vessel of clay, and in the
vessel thou wilt find a sweet liquid, that shall make the king
thy master forget his age forever.'

"Therefore, my lord, when the morning rose I went forth, and
looked under the stone, and behold the vessel of clay; and I
have brought it hither to my lord, the king."

"Quick--slave--quick! that I may drink and regain my youth!"

"Nay, listen, O king! farther said the star to me:

"'It is only at night, when the stars have power, that this
their gift will avail; wherefore, the king must wait till the
hush of the midnight, when the moon is high, and then may he
mingle the liquid with his wine.

"'And he must reveal to none that he hath received the gift from
the hand of the servant of the stars. For THEY do their work in
secret, and when men sleep; therefore they love not the babble
of mouths, and he who reveals their benefits shall surely die.'"

"Fear not," said the king, grasping the vessel; "none shall
know: and, behold, I will rise on the morrow; and my two
sons--wrangling for my crown--verily, I shall be younger than
they!"

Then the king laughed loud; and he scarcely thanked the servant
of the stars, neither did he promise him reward: for the kings
in those days had little thought--save for themselves.

And Morven said to him, "Shall I not attend my lord? for without
me, perchance, the drug might fail of its effect."

"Aye," said the king, "rest here."

"Nay," replied Morven; "thy servants will marvel and talk much,
if they see the son of Osslah sojourning in thy palace. So would
the displeasure of the gods of night perchance be incurred.
Suffer that the lesser door of the palace be unbarred, so that
at the night hour, when the moon is midway in the heavens, I may
steal unseen into thy chamber, and mix the liquid with thy
wine."

"So be it," said the king. "Thou art wise though thy limbs are
crooked and curt; and the stars might have chosen a taller man."

Then the king laughed again; and Morven laughed too, but there
was danger in the mirth of the son of Osslah.


The night had began to wane, and the inhabitants of Oestrich were
buried in deep sleep, when, hark! a sharp voice was heard crying
out in the streets, "Woe, woe! Awake ye sons of Oestrich--woe!"

Then forth, wild--haggard--alarmed--spear in hand, rushed the
giant sons of the rugged tribe, and they saw a man on a height
in the middle of the city, shrieking, "Woe!" and it was Morven,
the son of Osslah!

And he said unto them, as they gathered round him, "Men and
warriors, tremble as ye hear.

"The star of the west hath spoken to me and thus saith the star:

"'Evil shall fall upon the kingly house of Oestrich--yea, ere
the morning dawns; wherefore, go thou mourning into the streets,
and wake the inhabitants to woe!'

"So I rose and did the bidding of the star."

And while Morven was yet speaking, a servant of the king's house
ran up to the crowd, crying loudly:

"The king is dead!"

So they went into the palace and found the king stark upon his
couch, and his huge limbs all cramped and crippled by the pangs
of death, and his hands clenched as if in menace of a foe--the
foe of all living flesh!

Then fear came on the gazers, and they looked on Morven with a
deeper awe than the boldest warrior would have called forth: and
they bore him back to the council-hall of the wise men, wailing
and clashing their arms in woe, and shouting, ever and anon:

"_Honor to Morven, the prophet!_"

And that was the first time the word PROPHET was ever used in
those countries.


At noon, on the third day from the king's death, Siror sought
Morven, and he said:

"Lo, my father is no more, and the people meet this evening at
sunset to elect his successor, and the warriors and the young
men will surely choose my brother, for he is more known in war.
Fail me not, therefore."

"Peace, boy!" said Morven, sternly; "nor dare to question the
truth of the gods of night."

For Morven now began to presume on his power among the people,
and to speak as rulers speak, even to the sons of kings.

And the voice silenced the fiery Siror, nor dared he to reply.

"Behold," said Morven, taking up a chaplet of colored plumes,
"wear this on thy head, and put on a brave face--for the people
like a hopeful spirit--and go down with thy brother to the place
where the new king is to be chosen, and leave the rest to the
stars.

"But, above all things, forget not that chaplet; it has been
blessed by the gods of night."

The prince took the chaplet and returned home.

It was evening and the warriors and chiefs of the tribe were
assembled in the place where the new king was to be elected.

And the voices of the many favored Prince Voltoch, the brother
of Siror, for he had slain twelve foeman with his spear; and
verily, in those days, that was a great virtue in a king.

Suddenly there was a shout in the streets, and the people cried
out:

"Way for Morven, the prophet, the prophet!"

For the people held the son of Osslah in even greater respect
than did the chiefs.

Now, since he had become of note, Morven had assumed a majesty
of air which the son of the herdsman knew not in his earlier
days; and albeit his stature was short, and his limbs halted,
yet his countenance was grave and high.

He only of the tribe wore a garment that swept the ground, and
his head was bare, and his long black hair descended to his
girdle, and rarely was change or human passion seen in his calm
aspect.

He feasted not, nor drank wine, nor was his presence frequent in
the streets.

He laughed not, neither did he smile, save when alone in the
forest--and then he laughed at the follies of his tribe.

So he walked slowly through the crowd, neither turning to the
left nor to the right, as the crowd gave way; and he supported
his steps with a staff of the knotted pine.

And when he came to the place where the chiefs were met, and the
two princes stood in the centre, he bade the people around him
proclaim silence.

Then mounting on a huge fragment of rock, he thus spake to the
multitude:

"Princes, wantors and bards! ye, O council of the wise men! and
ye, O hunters of the forests, and snarers of the fishes of the
streams! harken to Morven, the son of Osslah.

"Ye know that I am lowly of race, and weak of limb; but did I
not give into your hands the tribe of Alrich, and did ye not
slay them in the dead of night with a great slaughter?

"Surely, ye must know that this of himself did not the
herdsman's son; surely he was but the agent of the bright gods
that love the children of Oestrich.

"Three nights since, when slumber was on the earth, was not my
voice heard in the streets?

"Did I not proclaim woe to the kingly house of Oestrich? and
verily the dark arm had fallen on the bosom of the mighty, that
is no more.

"Could I have dreamed this thing merely in a dream, or was I not
as the voice of the bright gods that watch over the tribes of
Oestrich?

"Wherefore, O men and chiefs! scorn not the son of Osslah, but
listen to his words; for are they not the wisdom of the stars?

"Behold, last night, I sat alone in the valley, and the trees
were hushed around, and not a breath stirred; and I looked upon
the star that councels the son of Osslah; and I said:

"'Dread conqueror of the cloud! thou that bathest thy beauty in
the streams and piercest the pine-boughs with thy presence;
behold thy servant grieved because the mighty one hath passed
away, and many foes surround the houses of my brethren; and it
is well that they should have a king valiant and prosperous in
war, the cherished of the stars.

"'Wherefore, O star! as thou gavest into our hands the warriors
of Alrich, and didst warn us of the fall of the oak of our
tribe, wherefore, I pray thee, give unto the people a token that
they may choose that king whom the gods of the night prefer!'

"Then a low voice sweeter than the music of the bard, stole
along the silence.

"'Thy love for thy race is grateful to the stars of night: go
then, son of Osslah, and seek the meeting of the chiefs and the
people to choose a king, and tell them not to scorn thee because
thou art slow to the chase and little known in war; for the
stars give thee wisdom as a recompense for all.

"'Say unto the people that as the wise men of the council shape
their lessons by the flight of birds, so by the flight of birds
stall a token be given unto them, and they shall choose their
kings.

"'For,' said, the star of right, 'the birds are children of the
winds, they pass to and fro along the ocean of the air, and
visit the clouds that are the warships of the gods.

"'And their music is but broken melodies which they gleam from
the harps above.

"'Are they not the messengers of the storm?

"'Ere the stream chafes against the bank, and the rain descends,
know ye not, by the wail of birds and their low circles over the
earth, that the tempest is at hand?

"'Wherefore, wisely do ye deem that the children of the air are
the fit interpreters between the sons of men and the lords of
the world above.

"'Say then to the people and the chiefs, that they shall take,
from among the doves that nest in the roof of the palace, a
white dove, and they shall let it loose in the air, and verily
the gods of the night shall deem the dove as a prayer coming
from the people, and they shall send a messenger to grant the
prayer and give to the tribes of Oestrich a king worthy of
themselves.'

"With that the star spoke no more."

Then the friends of Voltoch murmured among themselves, and they
said, "Shall this man dictate to us who shall be king?"

But the people and the warriors shouted:

"Listen to the star; do we not give or deny battle according as
the bird flies--shall we not by the same token choose him by
whom the battle should be led?"

And the thing seemed natural to them, for it was after the
custom of the tribe.

Then they took one of the doves that built in the roof of the
palace, and they bought it to the spot where Morven stood, and
he, looking up to the stars and muttering to himself, released
the bird.

There was a copse of trees a little distance from the spot, and
as the dove ascended, a hawk suddenly rose from the copse and
pursued the dove; and the dove was terrified, and soared
circling high above the crowd, when, lo, the hawk, poising
itself one moment on its wings, swooped with a sudden swoop,
and, abandoning its prey, alighted on the plumed head of Siror.

"Behold," cried Morven in a loud voice, "behold your king!"

"Hail, all hail the king!" shouted the people. "All hail the
chosen of the stars!"

Then Morven lifted his right hand, and the hawk left the prince,
and alighted on Morven's shoulder.

"Bird of the gods!" said he, reverently, "hast thou not a secret
message for my ear?" Then the hawk put its beak to Morven's ear,
and Morven bowed his head submissively; and the hawk rested with
Morven from that moment and would not be scared away.

And Morven said:

"The stars have sent me this bird, that, in the day-time, when I
see them not, we may never be without a counsellor in distress."

So Siror was made king, and Maven the son of Osslah was
constrained by the king's will to take Orna for his wife; and
the people and the chiefs honored Morven, the prophet, above all
the elders of the tribe.


One day Morven said unto himself, musing, "Am I not already
equal with the king? nay, is not the king my servant? did I not
place him over the heads of his brothers? am I not, therefore,
more fit to reign than he is? shall I not push him from his
seat?

"It is a troublesome and stormy office to reign over the wild
men of Oestrich, to feast in the crowded hail, and to lead die
warriors to the fray.

"Surely, if I feasted not, neither went out to war, they might
say, 'This is no king, but the cripple Morven;' and some of the
race of Siror might slay me secretly.

"But can I not be greater far than kings, and continue to choose
and govern them, living as now at mine own ease?

"_Verily, the stars shall give me a new palace, and many
subjects_."

Among the wise men was Darvan; and Morven feared him, for his
eye often sought the movements of the son of Osslah.

And Morven said "It were better to TRUST this man than to BLIND,
for surely I want a helpmate and a friend."

So he said to the wise man as he sat alone watching the setting
sun:

"It seemeth to me, O Darvan! I that we ought to build a great
pile in honor of the stars and the pile should be more glorious
than all the palaces of the chiefs and the palaces of the king;
for are not the stars our masters?

"And thou and I should be the chief dwellers in this new palace,
and we would serve the gods of night, and fatten their altars
with the choicest of the herd, and the freshest of the fruits of
the earth."

And Darvan said:

"thou speakest as becomes the servant of the stars. But will the
people help to build the pile, for they are a war-like race and
they love not toil?"

And Morven answered:

"_Doubtless the stars will ordain the work to be done. Fear
not_."

"In truth thou art a wondrous man, thy words ever come to pass,
answered Darvan; "and I wish thou wouldest teach me, friend, the
language of the stars."

"Assuredly if thou servest me thou shalt know," answered the
proud Morven; and Darvan was secretly wroth that the son of the
herdsman should command the service of an elder and a chief.

And when Morven returned to his wife he found her weeping much.

Now she loved the son of Osslah with an exceeding love, for he
was not savage and fierce as the men she had known, and she was
proud of his fame among the tribe; and he took her in his arms
and kissed her, and asked her why she wept.

Then she told him that her brother, the king, had visited her
and had spoken bitter words of Morven.

"He taketh from me the affection of my people," said Siror, "and
blindeth them with lies. And since he hath made me king, what if
he take my kingdom from me? Verily, a new tale of the stars
might undo the old."

And the king had ordered her to keep watch on Morven's secrecy,
and to see whether truth was in him when he boasted of his
commune with the Powers of Night.

But Orna loved Morven better than Siror, therefore she told her
husband all.

And Morven resented the king's ingratitude, and was troubled
much, for a king is a powerful foe; but tie comforted Orna, and
bade her dissemble and complain also of him to her brother, so
that he might confide to her unsuspectingly whatsoever he might
design against Morven.

There was a cave by Morven's house in which he kept the sacred
hawk, and wherein he secretly trained and nurtured other birds
against future need, and the door of the cave was always barred.

And one day he was thus engaged when he beheld a chink in the
wall, that he had never noted before, and the sun came playfully
in; and while he looked he perceived the sunbeam was darkened,
and presently he saw a human face peering in through the chink.

And Morven trembled, for he knew he had been watched.


Morven ran hastily from the cave, but the spy had disappeared
among the trees, and Morven went straight to the chamber of
Darvan and sat himself down.

Darvan did not return home till late, and he started and turned
pale when he saw Morven.

But Morven greeted him as a brother, and bade him to a feast,
which, for the first time, he purposed giving at the full of the
moon, in honor of the stars.

And going out of Darvan's chamber, he returned to his wife, and
bade her hair, and go at the dawn of day to the king, her
brother, and complain bitterly of Morven's treatment, and pluck
the black schemes from the breast of the king. "For surely,"
said he, "Darvan hath lied to thy brother, and some evil awaits
me that I would fain know."

So the next morning Orna sought the king, and she said:

"The herdsman's son hath reviled me, and spoken harsh words to
me; stall I not be avenged?"

Then the king stamped his feet and shook his mighty sword.

"Surely thou shalt be avenged, for I have learned from one of
the elders that which convinceth me that the man hath lied to
the people, and the base-born shall surely die.

"Yea, the first time that he goeth alone into the forest my
brother and I will fall upon him and smite him to the death."

And with this comfort Siror dismissed Orna.

And Orna flung herself at the feet of her husband.

"Fly now, O my beloved!--fly into the forests afar from my
brethren, or surely the sword of Siror will end thy days."

Then the son of Osslab folded his arms, and seemed buried in
black thoughts; nor did he heed the voice of Orna, until again
and again she had implored him to fly.

"Fly!" he said at length. "Nay, I was doubting what punishment
the stars should pour down upon our foe. Let warriors fly.
Morven, the prophet, conquers by arms mightier than the sword."

Nevertheless Morven was perplexed in his mind, and knew not how
to save himself from the vengeance of the king.


Now, while Morven was musing hopelessly, he heard a roar of
waters; and behold the river, for it was now the end of autumn,
had burst its bounds, and was rushing along the valley to the
houses of the city.

And now the men of the tribe, and the women, and the children,
came running, and with shrieks to Morven's house, crying:

"Behold the river has burst upon us!--Save us, O ruler of the
stars!"

Then the sudden thought broke upon Morven and he resolved to
risk his fate upon one desperate scheme.

And he came out from the house calm and sad, and he said:

"Ye know not what ye ask; I cannot save ye from this peril: ye
have brought it on yourselves."

And they cried: "How? O son of Osslah--we are ignorant of our
crime."

And he answered:

"Go down to the king's palace and wait before it, and surely I
will follow ye, and ye shall learn wherefore ye have incurred
this punishment from the gods."

Then the crowd rolled murmuring back, as a receding sea; and
when it was gone from the place, Morven went alone to the house
of Darvan, which was next his own: and Darvan was greatly
terrified, for he was of a great age, and had no children,
neither friends, and he feared that he could not of himself
escape the waters.

And Morven said to him, soothingly:

"Lo, the people love me, and I will see that thou art saved for
verily thou hast been friendly to me, and done me much service
with the king."

And as he thus spake, Morven opened the door of the house and
looked forth, and saw that they were quite alone; then he seized
the old man by the throat, and ceased not his grip till he was
quite dead.

And leaving the body of the elder on the floor, Morven, stole
from the house and shut the gate.

And as he was going to his cave he mused a little while, when,
hearing the mighty roar of the waves advancing, and afar off the
shrieks of women, he lifted up his head, and said proudly:

"No! in this hour terror alone shall be my slave; I will use no
art save the power of my soul."

So, leaning on his pine staff, he strode down to the palace.

And it was now evening, and many of the men held torches, that
they might see each other's faces in the universal fear.

Red flashed the quivering flames on the dark robes and pale
front of Morven; and he seemed mightier than the rest, because
his face alone was calm amidst the tumult.

And louder and hoarser came the roar of the waters; and swift
rusted the shades of night over the hastening tide.

And Morven said in a stern voice:

"Where is the king; and wherefore is he absent from his people
in the hour of dread?"

Then the gate of the palace opened; and, behold Siror was
sitting in the hall by the vast pine-fire and his brother by his
side, and his chiefs around him: for they would not deign to
come amongst the crowd at the bidding of the herdsman's son.

Then Morven, standing upon a rock above the heads of the people
(the same rack whereon he had proclaimed the king), thus spake:

"Ye desired to know, O sons of Oestrich! wherefore the river
hath burst its bounds, and the peril hath come upon you.

"Learn then, that the stars resent as the foulest of human
crimes an insult to their servants and delegates below.

"Ye are all aware of the manner of life of Morven, whom ye have
surnamed the Prophet!

"He harms not man or beast; he lives alone; and, far from the
wild joys of the warrior tribe, he worships in awe and fear the
Powers of Night!

"So is he able to advise ye of the coming danger--so is he able
to save ye from the foe. Thus are your huntsmen swift and your
warriors bold; and thus do your cattle bring forth their young,
and the earth its fruits.

"What think ye, and what do ye ask to hear?

"Listen, men of Oestrich!--they have laid snares for my life; and
there are amongst you those who have whetted the sword against
the bosom that is only filled with love for you.

"Therefore have the stern lords of heaven loosened the chains of
the river--therefore doth this evil menace ye.

"Neither will it pass away until they who dig the pit for the
servant of the stars are buried in the same."

Then, by the red torches, the faces of the men looked fierce and
threatening; and ten thousand voices shouted forth:

"Name them who conspired against thy life, O holy prophet! and
surely they shall be torn limb from limb."

And Morven turned aside, and they saw that he wept bitterly; and
he said:

"Ye have asked me, and I have answered: but now scarce will ye
believe the foe that I have provoked against me; and by the
heavens themselves I swear, that if my death would satisfy their
fury, nor bring down upon yourselves, and your children's
children, the anger of the throned stars, gladly would I give my
bosom to the knife. Yes," he cried, lifting up his voice, and
pointing his shadowy arm towards the hall where the king sat by
the pine-fire--"yes, thou whom by my voice the stars chose above
thy brother--yes, Siror, the guilty one! take thy sword, and
come hither--strike, if thou hast the heart to strike, the
Prophet of the Gods!"

The king started to his feet, and the crowd were hushed in a
shuddering silence.

Morven resumed:

"Know then, O men of Oestrich, that Siror and Voltoch, his
brother, and Darvan, the elder of the wise men, have purposed to
slay your prophet, even at such hour as when alone he seeks the
shade of the forest to devise new benefits for you. Let the king
deny it, if he can!"

Then Voltoch, of the giant limbs, strode forth from the hall,
and his spear quivered in his hand.

"Rightly hast thou spoken, base son of my father's herdsman! and
for thy sins shalt thou surely die; for thou liest when thou
speakest of thy power with the stars, and thou laughest at the
folly of them who hear thee: wherefore put him to death."

Then the chiefs in the hall clashed their arms, and rushed forth
to slay the son of Osslah.

But he, stretching his unarmed hands on high, exclaimed:

"Hear him, O dread ones of the night--hark how he blasphemeth."

Then the crowd took up the word, and cried:

"He blasphemeth--he blasphemeth against the prophet!"

But the king and the chiefs who hated Morven, because of his
power with the people, rushed into the crowd; and the crowd were
irresolute, nor knew they how to act, for never yet had they
rebelled against their chiefs, and they feared alike the prophet
and the king.

And Siror cried:

"Summon Darvan to us, for he bath watched the steps of Morven,
and he shall lift the veil from my people's eyes."

Then three of the swift of foot started forth to the house of
Darvan.

And Morven cried out with a loud voice:

"Hark! thus saith the star who, now riding through yonder cloud
breaks forth upon my eyes--'For the lie that the elder hath
uttered against my servant, the curse of the stars shall fall
upon him.' Seek, and as ye find him, so may ye find ever the
foes of Morven and the gods."

A chill and an icy fear fell over the crowd, and even the cheek
of Siror grew pale; and Morven, erect and dark above the waving
torches, stood motionless with folded arms.

And hark--far and fast came on the war-steeds of the wave--the
people heard them marching to the land, and tossing their white
manes in the roaring wind.

"Lo, as ye listen," said Morven, calmly, "the river sweeps on.
Haste, for the gods will have a victim, be it your prophet or
your king."

"Slave!" shouted Siror, and his spear left his hand, and far
above the heads of the crowd sped hissing beside the dark form
of Morven, and rent the trunk of the oak behind.

Then the people, wroth at the danger of their beloved seer,
uttered a wild yell, and gathered round him with brandished
swords, facing their chieftains and their king.

But at that instant, ere the war had broken forth among the
tribe, the three warriors returned, and they bore Darvan on
their shoulders, and laid him at the feet of the king, and they
said tremblingly:

"Thus found we the elder in the centre of his own hall."

And the people saw that Darvan was a corpse, and that the
prediction of Morven was thus verified.

"So perish the enemies of Morven and the Stars!" cried the son
of Osslah. And the people echoed the cry.

Then the fury of Siror was at its height, and waving his sword
above his head, he plunged into the crowd:

"Thy blood, base-born, or mine."

"So be it!" answered Morven, quailing not. "People, smite the
blasphemer. Hark how the river pours down upon your children and
your hearths. On, on, or ye perish!"

And Siror fell, pierced by five hundred spears.

"Smite! smite!" cried Morven, as the chiefs of the royal house
gathered round the king.

And the clash of swords, and the gleam of spears, and the cries
of the dying, and the yell of the trampling people, mingled with
the roar of the elements, and the voices of the rushing wave.

Three hundred of the chiefs perished that night by the swords of
their own tribe. And the last cry of the victors was, "_Morven
the prophet_--MORVEN THE KING!"

And the son of Osslah, seeing the waves now spreading over the
valley, led Orna his wife, and the men of Oestrich, their women
and their children, to a high mount, where they waited the
dawning sun.

But Orna sat apart and wept bitterly, for her brothers were no
more, and her race had perished from the earth.

And Morven sought to comfort her in vain.

When the morning rose, they saw that the river had overspread
the greater part of the city, and now stayed its course among
the hollows of the vale.

Then Morven said to the people: "The star kings are avenged, and
their wrath appeased. Tarry only here until the water have
melted into the crevices of the soil."

And on the fourth day they returned to the city, and no man
dared to name another, save Morven, as the king.


But Morven retired into his cave and mused deeply; and then
assembling the people, he gave them new laws; and he made them
build a mighty temple in honor of the stars, and made them heap
within it all that the tribe held most precious.

And he took unto him fifty children from the most famous of the
tribe; and he took also ten from among the men who had served
him best, and he ordained that they should serve the stars in
the great temple: and Morven was their chief.

And he put away the crown they pressed upon him, and he chose
from among the elders a new king.

And he ordained that henceforth the servants only of the stars
in the great temple should elect the king and the rulers, and
hold council, and proclaim war: but he suffered the king to
feast, and to hunt, and to make merry in the banquet halls.

And Morven built altars in the temple, and was the first who, in
the North, _sacrificed the beast and the bird, and afterwards
human flesh_, upon the altars.

And he drew auguries from the entrails of the victim, and made
schools for the science of the prophet; and Morven's piety was
the wonder of the tribe, in that he refused to be a king.

And Morven, the high-priest, was _ten thousand times mightier
than the king_.

He taught the people to till the ground, and to sow the herb;
and by his wisdom, and the valor that his prophecies instilled
into men, he conquered all the neighboring tribes.

And the sons of Oestrich spread themselves over a mighty empire,
and with them spread the name and the laws of Morven.

And in every province which he conquered, he ordered them to
build a temple to the stars.

But a heavy sorrow fell upon the years of Morven.

The sister of Siror bowed down her head and survived not long
the slaughter of her race.

And she left Morven childless.

And he mourned bitterly and as one distraught, for her only in
the world had his heart the power to love.

And he sat down and covered his face, saying:

"Lo: I have conquered and travailed; and never before in the
world did man conquer what I have conquered.

"Verily, the empire of the iron thews and the giant limbs is no
more; I have found a new power, that henceforth shall sway the
lands;--_the empire of plotting brain and a commanding mind_.

"But, behold, my fate is barren, and I feel already that it will
grow neither fruit nor tree as a shelter to mine old age.

"Desolate and lonely shall I pass away unto my grave.

"O Orna! my beautiful! my loved! none were like unto thee, and
to thy love do I owe my glory and my life.

"Would for thy sake, O sweet bird! that nestled in the dark
cavern of my heart--would for thy sake that thy brethren had
been spared, for verily with my life would I have purchased
thine.

"Alas! only when I lost thee did I find that thy love was dearer
to me than the fear of others."

And Morven mourned night and day, and none might comfort him.

But from that time forth he gave himself solely to the cares of
his calling; and his nature and his affections, and whatever
there was left soft in him, grew hard like stone; and he was a
man without love, _and he forbade love and marriage to the
priest_.

Now, in his latter years, there arose OTHER prophets; for the
world had grown wiser even by Morven's wisdom, and some did say
unto themselves:

"Behold Morven, the herdsman's son, is a king of kings: this did
the stars for their servant; shall we not, therefore, be also
servants to the star?"

And they wore black garments like Morven, and went about
prophesying of what the stars foretold them.

And Morven was exceeding wroth; for he, more than other men,
knew that the prophets lied; wherefore he went forth against
them with the ministers of the temple, and he took them and
burned them by a slow fire: for thus said Morven to the people:

"_A true prophet hath honor, but I only am a true prophet!_"

"To all false prophets there shall be surely death."

And the people applauded the piety of the son of Osslah.

And Morven educated the wisest of the children in the mysteries
of the temple, so that they grew up to succeed him worthily.

And he died full of years and honor; and they carved his effigy
on a mighty stone before the temple, and the effigy endured for
a thousand ages, and whoso looked on it trembled; for the face
was calm with the calmness of unspeakable awe!

And Morven was the first mortal of the North
that made _Religion the stepping stone to Power_.

Of a surety Morven was a great man!




CONCLUSION

It was the last night of the old year, and the stars sat, each
upon his ruby throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the
world. The night was dark and troubled, the dread winds were
abroad, and fast and frequent hurried the clouds beneath the
thrones of the kings of night. But ever and anon fiery meteors
flashed along the depths of heaven, and were again swallowed up
in the graves of darkness.

And far below his brethren, and with a lurid haze around his
orb, sat the discontented star that had watched over the hunters
of the North. And on the lowest abyss of space there was spread
a thick and mighty gloom, from which, as from a caldron, rose
columns of wreathing smoke; and still, when the great winds
rested for an instant on their paths, voices of woe and
laughter, mingled with shrieks, were heard booming from the
abyss to the upper air.

And now, in the middest night, a vast figure rose slowly from
the abyss, and its wings threw blackness over the world. High
upward to the throne of the discontented star sailed the fearful
shape, and the star trembled on his throne when the form stood
before him face to face. And the shape said: "Hail, brother!--
all hail!"

"I know thee not," answered the star: "thou art not the
archangel that visitests the kings of night."

And the shape laughed loud. "I am the fallen star of the
morning.--I am Lucifer, thy brother. Hast thou not, O sullen
king, served me and mine? and hast thou not wrested the earth
from thy Lord who sittest above and given it to me by _darkening
the souls of men with the religion of fear?_ Wherefore come,
brother, come;--thou hast a throne prepared beside my own in the
fiery gloom. Come.--The heavens are no more for thee." Then the
star rose from his throne, and descended to the side of Lucifer.
For ever hath the spirit of discontent had sympathy with the
soul of pride.

And slowly they sank down to the gulf of gloom. It was the first
night of the new year, and the stars sat each on his ruby
throne, and watched with sleepless eyes upon the world. But
sorrow dimmed the bright faces of the kings of night, for they
mourned in silence and in fear for a fallen brother.

And the gates of the heaven of heavens flew open with a golden
sound, and the swift archangel fled down on his silent wings;
and the archangel gave to each of the stars, as before, the
message of his Lord; and to each star was his appointed charge.

And when the heraldry seemed done, there came a laugh from the
abyss of gloom, and half way from the gulf rose the lurid shape
of Lucifer, the fiend.

"Thou countest thy flock ill, O radiant shepherd. Behold! one
star is missing from the three thousand and ten."

"Back to thy gulf, false Lucifer!--the throne of thy brother
hath been filled."

And lo! as the archangel spake, the stars beheld a young and all
lustrous stranger on the throne of the erring star; and his face
was so soft to look upon, that the dimmest of human eyes might
have gazed upon its splendor unabashed; but the dark fiend alone
was dazzled by its lustre, and, with a yell that shook the
flaming pillars of the universe, he plunged backwards into the
gloom.

Then, far and sweet from the arch unseen, came forth the voice
of God:

"Behold! _on the throne of the discontented star sits the star
of hope; and he that breathed into mankind the Religion of Fear
hath a successor in him who shall teach earth the Religion of
Love._"

And evermore the Star of Fear dwells with Lucifer, and the Star
of Love keeps vigil in heaven.





ON THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

BY LORD BROUGHAM.



A DISSERTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

The question which has more than, any other harassed
metaphysical reasoners, but especially theologians, and upon
which it is probable that no very satisfactory conclusion will
ever be reached by the human faculties, is the Origin and
Sufferance of Evil.

Its existence being always assumed, philosophers have formed
various theories for explaining it, but they have always drawn
very different inferences from it.

The ancient Epicureans argued against the existence of the
Deity, because they held that the existence of Evil either
proved him to be limited in power or of a malignant nature;
either of which imperfections is inconsistent with the first
notions of a divine being.

In this kind of reasoning they have been followed both by the
atheists and sceptics of later times.

Bayle regarded the subject of evil as one of the great arsenals
from whence his weapons were to be chiefly drawn. None of the
articles in his famous Dictionary are more labored than those in
which he treats of this subject. _Monichian_, and still more
_Paulician_, almost assume the appearance of formal treatises
upon the question; and both _Marchionite_ and _Zoroaster_ treat
of the same subject. All these articles are of considerable
value; they contain the greater part of the learning upon the
question; and they are distinguished by the acuteness of
reasoning which was the other characteristic of their celebrated
author.

Those ancient philosophers who did not agree with Epicurus in
arguing from the existence of evil against the existence of a
providence that superintended and influenced the destinies of
the world, were put to no little difficulty in accounting for
the fact which they did not deny, and yet maintaining the power
of a divine ruler. The doctrine of a double principle, or of two
divine beings of opposite natures, one beneficent, the other
mischievous, was the solution which one class of reasoners
deemed satisfactory, and to which they held themselves driven by
the phenomena of the universe.

Others unable to deny, the existence of things which men
denominate evil, both physical and moral, explain them in a
different way. They maintained that physical evil only obtains
the name from our imperfect and vicious or feeble dispositions;
that to a wise man there is no such thing; that we may rise
superior to all such groveling notions as make us dread or
repine at any events which can befall the body; that pain,
sickness, loss of fortune or of reputation, exile, death itself,
are only accounted ills by a weak and pampered mind; that if we
find the world tiresome, or woeful, or displeasing, we may at
any moment quit it; and that therefore we have no right whatever
to call any suffering connected with existence on earth an evil,
because almost all sufferings can be borne by a patient and firm
mind; since if the situation we are placed in becomes either
intolerable, or upon the whole more painful than agreeable, it
is our own fault that we remain in it.

But these philosophers took a further view of the question which
especially applied to moral evil. They considered that nothing
could be more groundless than to suppose that if there were no
evil there could be any good in the world; and they illustrated
this position by asking how we could know anything of temperance,
fortitude or justice, unless there were such things as excess,
cowardice and injustice.

These were the doctrines of the Stoics, from whose sublime and
impracticable philosophy they seemed naturally enough to flow.
Aulus Gellius relates that the last-mentioned argument was
expounded by Chrysippus, in his work upon providence. The answer
given by Plutarch seems quite sufficient: "As well might you say
that Achilles could not have a fine head of hair unless
Thersites had been bald; or that one man's limbs could not be
all sound if another had not the gout."

In truth, the Stoical doctrine proceeds upon the assumption that
all virtue is only the negative of vice; and is as absurd, if
indeed it be not the very same absurdity, as the doctrine which
should deny the existence of affirmative or positive truths,
resolving them all into the opposite of negative propositions.
Indeed, if we even were to admit this as an abstract position,
the actual existence of evil would still be unnecessary to the
idea, and still more to the existence, of good. For the
conception of evil, the bare idea of its possibility, would be
quite sufficient, and there would be no occasion for a single
example of it.

The other doctrine, that of two opposite principles, was
embraced by most of the other sects, as it should seem, at some
period or other of their inquiries. Plato himself, in his later
works, was clearly a supporter of the system; for he held that
there were at least two principles, a good and an evil; to which
he added a third, the moderator or mediator between them.

Whether this doctrine was, like many others, imported into
Greece from the East, or was the natural growth of the schools,
we cannot ascertain. Certain it is that the Greeks themselves
believed it to have been taught by Zoroaster in Asia, at least
five centuries before the Trojan war; so that it had an
existence there long before the name of philosophy was known in
the western world.

Zoroaster's doctrine agreed in every respect with Plato's; for
besides Oomazes, the good, and Arimanius, the evil principle, he
taught that there was a third, or mediatory one, called Mithras.
That it never became any part of the popular belief in Greece or
Italy is quite clear. All the polytheism of those countries
recognized each of the gods as authors alike of good and evil.
Nor did even the chief of the divinities, under whose power the
rest were placed, offer any exception to the general rule; for
Jupiter not only gave good from one urn and ill from another, but
he was also, according to the barbarous mythology of classical
antiquity, himself a model at once of human perfections and of
human vices.

After the light of the Christian religion had made some way
toward supplanting the ancient polytheism, the doctrine of two
principles was broached; first by Marcion, who lived in the time
of Adrian and Antonius Pius, early in the second century; and
next by Manes, a hundred years later. He was a Persian slave,
who was brought into Greece, where he taught this doctrine,
since known by his name, having learned it, as is said, from
Scythianus, an Arabian. The Manichean doctrines, afterwards
called also Paulician, from a great teacher of them in the
seventh century, were like almost all the heresies in the
primitive church, soon mixed up with gross impurities of sacred
rites as well as extravagant absurdities of creed.

The Manicheans were, probably as much on this account as from
the spirit of religious intolerance, early the objects of severe
persecution; and the Code of Justinian itself denounces capital
punishment against any of the sect, if found within the Roman
dominions.

It must be confessed that the theory of two principles, when
kept free from the absurdities and impurities which were
introduced into the Manichean doctrine, is not unnaturally
adopted by men who have no aid from the light of revelation,[1]
and who are confounded by the appearance of a world where evil
and good are mixed together, or seem to struggle with one
another, sometimes the one prevailing, and sometimes the other;
and accordingly, in all countries, in the most barbarous
nations, as well as among the most refined, we find plain traces
of reflecting men having been driven to this solution of the
difficulty.

It seems upon a superficial view to be very easily deducible
from the phenomena; and as the idea of infinite power, with
which it is manifestly inconsistent, does by no means so
naturally present itself to the mind, as long as only a very
great degree of power, a power which in comparison of all human
force may be termed infinite, is the attribute with which the
Deity is believed to be endued. Manichean hypothesis is by no
means so easily refuted. That the power of the Deity was
supposed to have limits even in the systems of the most
enlightened heathens is unquestionable. They, generally
speaking, believed in the eternity of matter, and conceived some
of its qualities to be so essentially necessary to its existence
that no divine agency could alter them. They ascribed to the
Deity a plastic power, a power not of creating or annihilating,
but only of moulding, disposing and moving matter. So over mind
they generally give him the like power, considering it as a kind
of emanation from his own greater mind or essence, and destined
to be re-united with him hereafter. Nay, over all the gods, and
of superior potency to any, they conceived fate to preside; an
overruling and paramount necessity, of which they formed some
dark conceptions, and to which the chief of all the gods was
supposed to submit. It is, indeed, extremely difficult to state
precisely what the philosophic theory of theology was in Greece
and Rome, because the wide difference between the esoteric and
exoteric doctrines, between the belief of the learned few and
the popular superstition, makes it very difficult to avoid
confounding the two, and lending to the former some of the
grosser errors with which the latter abounded. Nevertheless, we
may rely upon what has been just stated, as conveying, generally
speaking, the opinion of philosophers, although some sects
certainly had a still more scanty measure of belief.

But we shall presently find that in the speculation of the much
more enlightened moderns, Christians of course, errors of a like
kind are to be traced. They constantly argue the great question
of evil upon a latent assumption, that the power of the Deity
is restricted by some powers or qualities inherent in matter;
notions analogous to that of faith are occasionally perceptible;
not stated or expanded indeed into propositions, but influencing
the course of the reasoning; while the belief of infinite
attributes is never kept steadily in view, except when it is
called in as requisite to refute the Manichean doctrines. Some
observers of the controversy have indeed not scrupled to affirm
that those of whom we speak are really Manicheans without
knowing it; and build their systems upon assumptions secretly
borrowed from the disciples of Zoroaster, without ever stating
those assumptions openly in the form of postulates or definition.

The refutation of the Manichean hypothesis is extremely easy if
we be permitted to assume that both the principles which it
supposes are either of infinite power or of equal power. If they
are of infinite power, the supposition of their co-existence
involves a contradiction in terms; for the one being in
opposition to the other, the power of each must be something
taken from that of the other; consequently neither can be of
infinite power. If, again, we only suppose both to be of equal
power, and always acting against each other, there could be
nothing whatever done, neither good or evil; the universe would
be at a standstill; or rather no act of creation could ever have
been performed, and no existence could be conceived beyond that
of the two antagonistic principles.

Archbishop Tillotson's argument, properly speaking, amounts to
this last proposition, and is applicable to equal and opposite
principles, although he applies it to two beings, both infinitely
powerful and counteracting one another. When he says they would
tie up each other's bands, he might apply this argument to such
antagonistic principles if only equal, although not infinitely
powerful. The hypothesis of their being both infinitely powerful
needs no such refutation; it is a contradiction in terms. But it
must be recollected that the advocates of the Manichean doctrine
endeavor to guard themselves against the attack by contending,
that the conflict between the two principles ends in a kind of
compromise, so that neither has it all his own way; there is a
mixture of evil admitted by the good principle, because else
the whole would beat a standstill; while there is much good
admitted by the evil principle, else nothing, either good or
evil, would be done. Another answer is therefore required to
this theory than what Tillotson and his followers have given.

_First_, we must observe that this reasoning of the Manicheans
proceeds upon the analogy of what we see in mortal contentions;
where neither party having the power to defeat the other, each
is content to yield a little to his adversary, and so, by mutual
concession, both are successful to some extent, and both to some
extent disappointed. But in a speculation concerning the nature
of the Deity, there seems no place for such notions.

_Secondly_, the equality of power is not an arbitrary
assumption; it seems to follow from the existence of the two
opposing principles. For if they are independent of one another
as to existence, which they must needs be, else one would
immediately destroy the other, so must they also, in each
particular instance, be independent of each other, and also
equal each to the other, else one would have the mastery, and
the influence of the other could not be perceived. To say that
in some things the good principle prevails and in others the
evil, is really saying nothing more than that good exists here
and evil there. It does not further the argument one step, nor
give anything like an explanation. For it must always be borne
in mind that the whole question respecting the Origin of Evil
proceeds upon the assumption of a wise, benevolent and powerful
Being having created the world. The difficulty, and the only
difficulty, is, how to reconcile existing evil with such a
Being's attributes; and if the Manichean only explains this by
saying the good Being did what is good, and another and evil
Being did what is bad in the universe, he really tells us
nothing more than the fact; he does not apply his explanation to
the difficulty; and he supposes the existence of a second Deity
gratuitously and to no kind of purpose.

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 assumes, of course, that creation was the act of the
good Being; and it also assumes 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 assume 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 assumes both an antagonistic power, to limit
the Deity's power, and a malevolent principle to set the
antagonistic power in motion; whereas our supposition assumes 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 principal
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 assumes, 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 assume 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 class belong all the
sufferings to which sentient beings are exposed from the
qualities and affections of matter independent of their own
acts; the latter class 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 class of evils which ought
more properly to be ranged under the first. Nor is this a mere
question of classification: it affects the whole scope of the
argument. The second of the above-mentioned classes 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 constitution 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 constitution of
matter, or only is so far connected with the constitution of
mind as that the nature and existence of a sentient being must
be assumed 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 class
are the pains, privations and destruction inflicted by men one
upon another; of the latter class 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 fortitude or self-control. It is clear that as
far as the question of the origin of evil is concerned, the
first of these two classes, 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 class
depends upon matter; because, however ill-disposed the agent's
mind may be, he could inflict the mischief only in consequence
of the constitution 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
class, 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 class, 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
assuming 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 _petitio 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 analysis 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
_petitio 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 constitution 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 assume 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 God 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 God 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 assuming 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 assumes 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 assumes 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 assumed 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 assumed both; and it must be
added, he has made his assumption 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
God? 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 God, how come they to have place in anything? Or why does God
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 God'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 astonishing to find this acute
metaphysician begin with an assumption 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 God 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 constitution."--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 constitution 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 assumed. How different the case here! We open the work of the
prelate and find it from the first to last a chain of gratuitous
assumptions, 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 constitution of the material world, were assumed 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 constitution,
and having also the power to make different laws and to give
matter another constitution, the whole question is, how his
choosing to create the present existing order of things--the
laws and the constitution which we find to prevail--can be
reconciled with perfect goodness. The whole argument of the
Archbishop assumes 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, be 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 God 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 assumption 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 appetites; which
last, it must in passing be remarked, belongs to the head of
physical evil, and cannot be assumed 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 God, 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 circumstances; 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 assumes 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 God 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 constitution 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 illustration. 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 assumes 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
substitute propounded to supply that father's deficiency.--
"When, therefore," says the Archbishop, "matter, motion and
free-will are constituted, 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 God 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 substitute an evil one." (_Ib._
subs. 7, _sub. fine._) Nor is the explanation rendered more
satisfactory, or indeed more intelligible, by the concluding
passage 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 assuredly 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 be often
dwells, that if this nature were altered, we cannot possibly
tell whether worse might not ensue; this, too, is assuming 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 assumption pervades and paralyzes the whole
argument, rendering it utterly inconclusive. The author is to
answer an objection derived from the constitution of our
appetites 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 God 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 assumptions 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 assumes 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." Passing 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 assumptions
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 be 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 passed
when we have quitted the encumbrances of our mortal state, and
are permitted to survey those regions beyond the sphere of our
present circumscribed 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 assign 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 assume 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 glasses, 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.

But, again, while we are ignorant of this, perhaps the most
sublime truth in all science, we were always arguing as if the
system had an imperfection, as if the disturbing forces of the
different planets and the sun, acting on one another, constantly
changed the orbits of each planet, and must, in a course of
ages, work the destruction of the whole planetary arrangement
which we had contemplated with so great admiration and with awe.
It was deemed enough if we could show that this derangement must
be extremely slow, and that, therefore, the system might last
for many more ages without requiring any interposition of
omnipotent skill to preserve it by rectifying its motions. Thus
one of the most celebrated writers above cited argues that,
"from the nature of gravitation and the concentricity of the
orbits, the irregularities produced are so slowly operated in
contracting, dilating and inclining those orbits, that the
system may go on for many thousand years before any extraordinary
interference becomes necessary in order to correct it." And Dr.
Burnett adds, that "those small irregularities cast no discredit
on the good contrivance of the whole." Nothing, however, could
cast greater discredit if it were as he supposed, and as all men
previous to the late discoveries supposed; it was only, they
rather think, a "small irregularity," which was every hour
tending to the destruction of the whole system, and which
must have deranged or confounded its whole structure long before
it destroyed it. Yet now we see that the wisdom, to which a
thousand years are as one day, not satisfied with constructing a
fabric which might last for "many thousand years without His
interference," has so formed it that it may thus endure forever.

Now if such be the grounds of our belief in the universal
prevalence of Design, and such the different lights which at
different periods of our progress in science we possess upon
this branch of the divine government; if we undoubtingly believe
that contrivance is universal only because we can trace and
comprehend it in a great majority of instances, and if the
number of exceptions to the rule is occasionally diminished as
our knowledge of the particulars is from time to time extended--
may we not apply the same principle to the apprehension of
Benevolent purpose, and infer from the number of instances
in which we plainly perceive a good intention, that if we
were better acquainted with those cases in which a contrary
intention is now apparent, we should there, too, find the
generally pervading character of Benevolence to prevail? Not
only is this the manner in which we reason respecting the Design
of the Creator from examining his works; it is the manner in
which we treat the conduct of our fellow-creatures. A man of the
most extensive benevolence and strictest integrity in his
general deportment has done something equivocal; nay, something
apparently harsh and cruel; we are slow to condemn him; we give
him credit for acting with a good motive and for a righteous
purpose; we rest satisfied that "if we only knew everything he
would come out blameless." This arises from a just and a sound
view of human character, and its general consistency with
itself. The same reasoning may surely be applied with all
humility and reverence, to the works and the intentions of the
great Being who has implanted in our minds the principles which
lead to that just and sound view of the deeds and motives of
men.

But let the argument be rested upon our course of reasoning
respecting divine contrivance. The existence of Evil is in no
case more apparent than the existence of Disorder seems to be in
many things. To go no further than the last example which has
been given--the mathematician could perceive the derangement in
the planetary orbits, could demonstrate that it must ensue from
the mutual action of the heavenly bodies on each other, could
calculate its progress with the utmost exactness, could tell
with all nicety how much it would alter the forms of the
orbits in a given time, could foresee the time when the whole
system must be irretrievably destroyed by its operation as a
mathematical certainty. Nothing, that we call evil can be much
more certainly perceived than this derangement, of itself an
evil, certainly a great imperfection, if the system was observed
by the mind of man as we regard human works. Yet we now find,
from well considering some things which had escaped attention,
that the system is absolutely free from derangement; that all
the disturbances counterbalance each other; and that the orbits
never can either be flattened or bulged out beyond a definite or
very inconsiderable quantity. Can any one doubt that there is
also a reason for even the small and limited, this regular and
temporary derangement? Why it exists at all, or in any the least
degree, we as yet know not. But who will presume to doubt that
it has a reason which would at once satisfy our minds were it
known to us? Nay, who will affirm that the discovery of it may
not yet be in reserve for some later and happier age? Then are
we not entitled to apply the same reasoning to what at present
appears Evil in a system of which, after all we know of it, so
much still remains concealed from our view?

The mere act of creation in a Being of wisdom so admirable and
power so vast, seems to make it extremely probable that perfect
goodness accompanies the exertion of his perfect skill. There is
something so repugnant to all our feelings, but also to all the
conceptions of our reason, in the supposition of such a Being
desiring the misery, for its own sake, of the Beings whom he
voluntarily called into existence and endowed with a sentient
nature, that the mind naturally and irresistibly recoils from
such a thought. But this is not all. If the nature of that great
Being were evil, his power being unbounded, there would be some
proportion between the amounts of ills and the monuments of that
power. Yet we are struck dumb with the immensity of His works to
which no imperfection can be ascribed, and in which no evil can
be traced, while the amount of mischief that we see might sink
into a most insignificant space; and is such as a being of
inconsiderable power and very limited skill could easily have
accomplished. This is not the same consideration with the
balance of good against evil; and inquirers do not seem to have
sufficiently attended to it. The argument, however, deserves
much attention, for it is purely and strictly inductive. The
divine nature is shown to be clothed with prodigious power and
incomparable wisdom and skill,--power and skill so vast and so
exceeding our comprehension that we ordinarily term them
infinite, and are only inclined to conceive the possibility
of limiting, by the course of the argument upon evil, one
alternative of which is assumed to raise an exception. But
admitting on account of the question under discussion, that we
have only a right to say that power and skill are prodigiously
great, though possibly not boundless, they are plainly shown in
the phenomena of the universe to be the attributes of a Being, who,
if evil-disposed, could have made the monuments of Ill upon a
scale resembling those of Power and Skill; so that if those
things which seem to us evil be really the result of a mischievous
design in such a Being, we cannot comprehend why they are upon
so entirely different a scale. This is a strong presumption from
the facts that we are wrong in imputing those appearances to such
a disposition. If so, what seems evil must needs be capable of
some other explanation consistent with divine goodness--that is
to say, would not prove to be evil at all if we knew the whole
of those facts.

But it is necessary to proceed a step further, especially with a
view to the fundamental position now contended for, the
extending to the question of Benevolence the same principles
which we apply to that of Intelligence. The evil which exists,
or that which we suppose to be evil, not only is of a kind and a
magnitude requiring inconceivably less power and less skill than
the admitted good of the creation--it also bears a very small
proportion in amount; quite as small a proportion as the
cases of unknown or undiscoverable design bear to those of
acknowledged and proved contrivance. Generally speaking, the
preservation and the happiness of sensitive creatures appears
to be the great object of creative exertion and conservative
providence. The expanding of our faculties, both bodily and
mentally, is accompanied with pleasure; the exercise of those
powers is almost always attended with gratification; all labor
so acts as to make rest peculiarly delicious; much of labor is
enjoyment; the gratification of those appetites by which both
the individual is preserved and the race is continued, is highly
pleasurable to all animals; and it must be observed that instead
of being attracted by grateful sensations to do anything
requisite for our good or even our existence, we might have been
just as certainly urged by the feeling of pain, or the dread of
it, which is a kind of suffering in itself. Nature, then,
resembles the law-giver who, to make his subjects obey, should
prefer holding out rewards for compliance with his commands
rather than denounce punishments for disobedience. But nature is
yet more kind; she is gratuitously kind; she not only prefers
inducement to threat or compulsion, but she adds more gratification
than was necessary to make us obey her calls. How well might all
creation have existed and been continued, though the air had not
been balmy in spring, or the shade and the spring refreshing in
summer; had the earth not been enamelled with flowers; and the
air scented with perfumes! How needless for the propagation of
plants was it that the seed should be enveloped in fruits the
most savory to our palate, and if those fruits serve some other
purpose, how foreign to that purpose was the formation of our
nerves so framed as to be soothed or excited by their flavor!
We here perceive design, because we trace adaptation. But we
at the same time perceive benevolent design, because we perceive
gratuitous and supererogatory enjoyment bestowed. Thus, too, see
the care with which animals of all kinds are tended from their
birth. The mother's instinct is not more certainly the means of
securing and providing for her young, than her gratification in
the act of maternal care is great and is also needless for making
her perform that duty. The grove is not made vocal during pairing
and incubation, in order to secure the laying or the hatching of
eggs; for if it were as still as the grave, or were filled with
the most discordant croaking, the process would be as well
performed. So, too, mark the care with which injuries are
remedied by what has been correctly called the _vis medicatrix_.
Is a muscle injured?--Suppuration takes place, the process of
granulation succeeds, and new flesh is formed to supply the gap,
or if that is less wide, a more simple healing process knits
together the severed parts. Is a bone injured?--A process
commences by which an extraordinary secretion of bony matter
takes place, and the void is supplied. Nay, the irreparable
injury of a joint gives rise to the formation of a new hinge,
by which the same functions may be not inconveniently, though
less perfectly, performed. Thus, too, recovery of vigor after
sickness is provided for by increased appetite; but there is here
superadded, generally, a feeling of comfort and lightness, an
enjoyment of existence so delightful, that it is a common remark
how nearly this compensates the sufferings of the illness. In
the economy of the mind it is the same thing. All our exertions
are stimulated by curiosity, and the gratification is extreme of
satisfying it. But it might have been otherwise ordered, and
some painful feeling might have been made the only stimulant to
the acquisition of knowledge. So, the charm of novelty is
proverbial; but it might have been the unceasing cause of the
most painful alarms. Habit renders every thing easy; but the
repetition might have only increased the annoyance. The loss of
one organ makes the others more acute. But the partial injury
might have caused, as it were, a general paralysis. 'Tis thus
that Paley is well justified in exclaiming, "It is a happy world
after all!" The pains and the sufferings, bodily and mental, to
which we are exposed, if they do not sink into nothing, at least
retreat within comparatively narrow bounds; the ills are hardly
seen when we survey the great and splendid picture of worldly
enjoyment or ease.

But the existence of considerable misery is undeniable: and the
question is, of course, confined to that. Its exaggeration, in
the ordinary estimate both of the vulgar and of skeptical
reasoners, is equally certain. Paley, Bishop Sumner, as well as
Derham, King, Ray and others of the older writers, have made
many judicious and generally correct observations upon its
amount, and they, as well as some of the able and learned
authors of the _Bridgwater Treatises_, have done much in
establishing deductions necessary to be made, in order that we
may arrive at the true amount. That many things, apparently
unmixed evils, when examined more narrowly, prove to be
partially beneficial, is the fair result of their well-meant
labors; and this, although anything rather than a proof that
there is no evil at all, yet is valuable as still further
proving the analogy between this branch of the argument and that
upon design; and in giving hopes that all may possibly be found
hereafter to be good, as everything will assuredly be found to
be contrived with an intelligent and useful purpose. It may be
right to add a remark or two upon some evils, and those of the
greatest magnitude in the common estimate of human happiness,
with a view of further illustrating this part of the subject.

Mere imperfection must altogether be deducted from the account.
It never can be contended that any evil nature can be ascribed
to the first cause, merely for not having endowed sentient
creatures with greater power or wisdom, for not having increased
and multiplied the sources of enjoyment, or for not having made
those pleasures which we have more exquisitely grateful. No one
can be so foolish as to argue that the Deity is either limited
in power, or deficient in goodness, because he has chosen to
create some beings of a less perfect order than others. The mere
negation in the creating of some, indeed of many, nay, of any
conceivable number of desirable attributes, is therefore no
proper evidence of evil design or of limited power in the
Creator--it is no proof of the existence of evil properly so
called. But does not this also erase death from the catalogue of
ills? It might well please the Deity to create a mortal being
which, consisting of soul and body, was only to live upon this
earth for a limited number of years. If, when that time has
expired, this being is removed to another and a superior state
of existence, no evil whatever accrues to it from the change;
and all views of the government of this world lead to the
important and consolitary conclusion, that such is the design of
the Creator; that he cannot have bestowed on us minds capable of
such expansion and culture only to be extinguished when they
have reached their highest pitch of improvement; or if this be
considered as begging the question by assuming benevolent
design, we cannot easily conceive that while the mind's force is
so little affected by the body's decay, the destruction or
dissolution of the latter should be the extinction of the
former. But that death operates as an evil of the very highest
kind in two ways is obvious; the dread of it often embitters
life, and the death of friends brings to the mind by far its
most painful infliction; certainly the greatest suffering it can
undergo without any criminal consciousness of its own.

For this evil, then--this grievous and admitted evil--how shall
we account? But first let us consider whether it be not
unavoidable; not merely under the present dispensation, and in
the existing state of things; for that is wholly irrelevant to
the question which is raised upon the fitness of this very state
of things; but whether it be not a necessary evil. That man
might have been created immortal is not denied; but if it were
the will of the Deity to form a limited being and to place him
upon the earth for only a certain period of time, his death was
the necessary consequence of this determination. Then as to the
pain which one person's removal inflicts upon surviving parties,
this seems the equally necessary consequence of their having
affections. For if any being feels love towards another, this
implies his desire that the intercourse with that other should
continue; or what is the same thing, the repugnance and aversion
to its ceasing; that is, he must suffer affliction for that
removal of the beloved object. To create sentient beings
devoid of all feelings of affection was no doubt possible to
Omnipotence; but to endow those beings with such feelings
as would give the constant gratification derived from the
benevolent affections, and yet to make them wholly indifferent
to the loss of the objects of those affections, was not possible
even for Omnipotence; because it was a contradiction in terms,
equivalent to making a thing both exist and not exist at one and
the same time. Would there have been any considerable happiness
in a life stripped of these kindly affections? We cannot affirm
that there would not, because we are ignorant what other
enjoyments might have been substituted for the indulgence of
them. But neither can we affirm that any such substitution could
have been found; and it lies upon those who deny the necessary
connection between the human mind, or any sentient being's mind,
and grief for the loss of friends, to show that there are
other enjoyments which could furnish an equivalent to the
gratification derived from the benevolent feelings. The question
then reduces itself to this: Wherefore did a being, who could
have made sentient beings immortal, choose to make them mortal?
or, Wherefore has he placed man upon the earth for a time only?
or, Wherefore has he set bounds to the powers and capacities
which he has been pleased to bestow upon his creatures? And this
is a question which we certainly never shall be able to solve;
but a question extremely different from the one more usually
put--How happens it that a good being has made a world full of
misery and death?

In the necessary ignorance wherein we are of the whole designs
of the Deity, we cannot wonder if some things, nay, if many
things, are to our faculties inscrutable. But we assuredly have
no right to say that those difficulties which try and vex us are
incapable of a solution, any more than we have to say, that
those cases in which as yet we can see no trace of design, are
not equally the result of intelligence, and equally conducive to
a fixed and useful purpose with those in which we have been able
to perceive the whole, or nearly the whole scheme. Great as have
been our achievements in physical astronomy, we are as yet
wholly unable to understand why a power pervades the system
acting inversely as the squares of the distance from the point
to which it attracts, rather than a power acting according to
any other law; and why it has been the pleasure of the almighty
Architect of that universe, that the orbits of the planets
should be nearly circular instead of approaching to, or being
exactly the same with many other trajectories of a nearly
similar form, though of other properties; nay, instead of being
curves of a wholly different class and shape. Yet we never doubt
that there was a reason for this choice; nay, we fancy it
possible that even on earth we may hereafter understand it more
clearly than we now do: and never question that in another state
of being we may be permitted to enjoy the contemplation of it.
Why should we doubt that, at least in that higher state, we may
also be enabled to perceive such an arrangement as shall make
evil wholly disappear from our present system, by showing that
it was necessary and inevitable, even in the works of the Deity;
or, which is the same thing, that its existence conduces to such
a degree of perfection and happiness upon, the whole, as could
not, even by Omnipotence, be attained without it; or, which is
the same thing, that the whole creation as it exists, taking
both worlds together, is perfect, and incapable of being in any
particular changed without being made worse and less perfect?
Taking both worlds together--For certainly were our views
limited to the present sublunary state, we may well affirm
that no solution whatever could even be imagined of the
difficulty--if we are never again to live; if those we here
loved are forever lost to us; if our faculties can receive no
further expansion; if our mental powers are only trained and
improved to be extinguished at their acme--then indeed are we
reduced to the melancholy and gloomy dilemma of the Epicureans;
and evil is confessed to checker, nay, almost to cloud over our
whole lot, without the possibility of comprehending why, or of
reconciling its existence with the supposition of a providence
at once powerful and good. But this inference is also an
additional argument for a future state, when we couple it with
these other conclusions respecting the economy of the world to
which we are led by wholly different routes, when we investigate
the phenomena around us and within us.

Suppose, for example, it should be found that there are certain
purposes which can in no way whatever--no conceivable way--be
answered except by placing man in a state of trial or probation;
suppose the essential nature of mind shall be found to be such
that it could not in any way whatever exist so as to be capable
of the greatest purity and improvement--in other words, the
highest perfection--without having undergone a probation; or
suppose it should be found impossible to communicate certain
enjoyments to rational and sentient beings without having
previously subjected them to certain trials and certain
sufferings--as, for instance, the pleasures derived from
a consciousness of perfect security, the certainty that we
can suffer and perish no more--this surely is a possible
supposition. Now, to continue the last example--Whatever
pleasure there is in the contrast between ease and previous
vexation or pain, whatever enjoyment we derive from the feeling
of absolute security after the vexation and uncertainty of a
precarious state, implies a previous suffering--a previous state
of precarious enjoyment; and not only implies it but necessarily
implies it, so that the power of Omnipotence itself could not
convey to us the enjoyment without having given us the previous
suffering. Then is it not possible that the object of an all
powerful and perfectly benevolent being should be to create like
beings, to whom as entire happiness, as complete and perfect
enjoyment, should be given as any created beings--that is, any
being, except the Creator himself--can by possibility enjoy?
This is certainly not only a very possible supposition, but it
appears to be quite consistent with, if it be not a necessary
consequence of, his being perfectly good as well as powerful and
wise. Now we have shown, therefore, that such being supposed
the design of Providence, even Omnipotence itself could not
accomplish this design, as far as one great and important class
of enjoyments is concerned, without the previous existence of
some pain, some misery. Whatever gratification arises from
relief--from contrast--from security succeeding anxiety--
from restoration of lost affections--from renewing severed
connections--and many others of a like kind, could not by any
possibility be enjoyed unless the correlative suffering had
first been undergone. Nor will the argument be at all impeached
by observing, that one Being may be made to feel the pleasure of
ease and security by seeing others subjected to suffering and
distress; for that assumes the infliction of misery on those
others; it is "_alterius_ spectare laborem" that we are
supposing to be sweet; and this is still partial evil.

As the whole argument respecting evil must, from the nature of
the question, resolve itself into either a proof of some
absolute or mathematical necessity not to be removed by infinite
power, or the showing that some such proof may be possible
although we have not yet discovered it, an illustration may
naturally be expected to be attainable from mathematical
considerations. Thus, we have already adverted to the law of
periodical irregularities in the solar system. Any one before it
was discovered seemed entitled to expatiate upon the operation
of the disturbing forces arising from mutual attraction, and to
charge the system arranged upon the principle of universal
gravitation with want of skill, nay, with leading to inevitable
mischief--mischief or evil of so prodigious an extent as to
exceed incalculably all the instances of evil and of suffering
which we see around us in this single planet. Nevertheless, what
then appeared so clearly to be a defect and an evil, is now well
known to be the very absolute perfection of the whole heavenly
architecture.

Again, we may derive a similar illustration from a much more
limited instance, but one immediately connected with strict
mathematical reasoning, and founded altogether in the nature of
necessary truth. The problem has been solved by mathematicians,
Sir Isaac Newton having first investigated it, of finding the
form of a symmetrical solid, or solid of revolution, which in
moving through a fluid shall experience the least possible
resistance. The figure bears a striking resemblance to that of a
fish. Now suppose a fish were formed exactly in this shape, and
that some animal endowed with reason were placed upon a portion
of its surface, and able to trace its form for only a limited
extent, say at the narrow part, where the broad portion or end
of the moving body were opposed, or seemed as if it were
opposed, to the surrounding fluid when the fish moved--the
reasoner would at once conclude that the contrivance of the
fish's form was very inconvenient, and that nothing could be
much worse adapted for expeditious or easy movement through the
waters.

Yet it is certain that upon being afterwards permitted to view
THE WHOLE body of the fish, what had seemed a defect and an
evil, not only would appear plainly to be none at all, but it
would appear manifest that this seeming evil or defect was a
part of the most perfect and excellent structure which it was
possible even for Omnipotence and Omniscience to have adopted,
and that no other conceivable arrangement could by possibility
have produced so much advantage, or tended so much to fulfill
the design in view. Previous to being enlightened by such an
enlarged view of the whole facts, it would thus be a rash and
unphilosophical thing in the reasoner whose existence we are
supposing to pronounce an unfavorable opinion. Still more unwise
would it be if numerous other observations had evinced traces of
skill and goodness in the fish's structure. The true and the
safe conclusion would be to suspend an opinion which could only
be unsatisfactorily formed upon imperfect data; and to rest in
the humble hope and belief that one day all would appear for the
best.

THE END.

----------------------------
[1] The "light of revelation," as well as the "light of the
Christian religion," has not dispelled the darkness of ignorance.
The torch of reason is a surer guide.--_Pub._

[2] The human race has from time immemorial been afflicted
with so-called revelations, all claiming inspiration, all
conflicting, and all being equally "mysterious and obscure." The
wars arising among these sectarians have retarded civilization,
and deluged the earth in blood. The revelations of science,
founded upon reason and demonstration, have proved the only safe
and beneficent guide.--_Pub._

[3] While it is true that the argument of Design, here given,
places the subject one step in advance, it is still unsatisfactory,
because it fails to explain to us who designed the designer, and
the mystery of creation still remains unsolved.

"What think you of an uncaused cause of everything?" is the
pertinent question which Bishop Watson, in his _Apology for the
Bible_, asked, and vainly asked, of the celebrated deist, Thomas
Paine.--_Pub._




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