Chapter 6

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 he 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 he has set himself to solve is anything rather than the real one touching the Origin of Evil; and that this attempt at a solution is as ineffectual as any of those which we have been considering.

Is, then, the question wholly incapable of solution, which all these learned and ingenious men have so entirely failed in solving? Must the difficulty remain forever unsurmounted, and only be approached to discover that it is insuperable? _Must the subject, of all others the most interesting for us to know well, be to us always as a sealed book, of which we can never know anything?_ From the nature of the thing--from the question relating to the operation of a power which, to our limited faculties, must ever be incomprehensible--there seems too much reason for believing that nothing precise or satisfactory ever will be attained by human reason regarding this great argument; and that the bounds which limit our views will only be 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.