Chapter 5

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, he at length comes to this conclusion, that life is a free gift, which we had no right to exact, and which the Deity lay under no necessity to grant, and therefore we must take it with the conditions annexed (p. 210); which is undeniably true, but is excluding the discussion and not answering the question proposed. Nor must it be forgotten that some reasoners deal strangely with the facts. Thus Derham, in his _Physico-Theology_, explaining the use of poison in snakes, first desires us to bear in mind that many venomous ones are of use medicinally in stubborn diseases, which is not true, and if it were, would prove nothing, unless the venom, not the flesh, were proved to be medicinal; and then says, they are “scourges upon ungrateful and sinful men;” adding the truly astounding absurdity, “that the nations which know not 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.