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death, sin, and hell only enter as infinitesimals into his processes of moral (if we may use the phrase) differentiation. We confess that, conclusive as is the reasoning which represents mere geometrical magnitudes as nothing, which are to be compared with quantities as many times greater as we please,' we never could derive any consolation from such a species of argument, as applied to those peculiar quantities called happiness' and misery; nor be at all more reconciled by it to the origin

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' of evil.' Each of the beings to whom this logical solace is applied, is a sentient creature, a little world in himself, to whom his weal or woe is no vanishing quantity, no infinitesimal, but a most serious matter; and, as it would be little comfort to such a being, if miserable, that he was but individually a martyr for the universal good,-(on Leibnitz's theory, that his misery was involved in the choice of the best possible world,' and that God could not but choose the best,')-so we confess we can derive as little comfort from this mode of viewing him.

We might perhaps modestly suggest to the metaphysician, that each of such beings must have before him an infinity of misery; but it would be of no use; for he would still have at hand his doctrine of Ultimate Ratios, and his Differential Calculus. He would say that the individual was but an unimportant function of the universe; that the increment of happiness on the whole would be infinitely greater than the increment of misery-though it is true that in each case the weal or woe might be absolutely infinite; and that of two quantities which increase without limit, one may increase so much more rapidly than the other, as not only to increase without limit absolutely, but without limit in the ratio in which it is a multiple of the other.

The heart of a genuine metaphysician,' says Burke, 'is harder than a piece of the nether millstone.' The heart of Leibnitz was not a hard one; but he was too apt to treat of such matters as these, just as he would have treated problems in the higher geometry.

It is, we confess, no alleviation to us to consider as the final cause of the permission of evil, that it may possibly augment the joys of seraphim, or in some ineffable way give a piquancy and gusto to the delights of paradise; though, how it can do so, is surely as great a mystery as the origin of evil' itself. One would think that those pure and benevolent spirits would consent even to be taxed of some portion of their felicity, if they might thereby but obliterate all evil from the universe; or rather, that this obliteration of evil must necessarily be an augmentation of their happiness. The supposition that any beings could by possibility derive gratification from its presence, would, one should

think, rather apply to the opposite quarter of the universe, and form the characteristic, not of angels, but of demons.

It is true, indeed, that when Leibnitz asserts that the permission of evil is essential to the constitution of his best of all pos'sible worlds,' he does not expressly say that it is the best' inasmuch as it involves the largest possible amount of purity and happiness, and that therefore evil was permitted that these might be augmented; but he every where implies it: and as the preponderance of these elements is the only intelligible criterion to us of one system of things being better' than another, so the supposition that there is some other unimaginable sense in which it can be said that some possible world is the best,' and that for this reason evil was permitted, is wholly gratuitous.

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Viewed in any light, this argument of the permission of so much moral and spiritual evil to many, for the purpose of securing the happiness of a greater number, is unsatisfactory. For we shall only have the old difficulty re-appearing under a new form, and at another stage; and shall be just as much perplexed as before, to reconcile with our notions of justice and goodness the destination of myriads to misery, for the purpose of enhancing the happiness of some multiple of those myriads. The only answer that could be given would be that conclusive one of the ApostleHow unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out,'-an answer with which, for aught we can see, we might just as well have rested satisfied a step earlier in the controversy. The question of the origin of evil' is like a great cavern, to which there is no second outlet; we may pass through many passages and labyrinths, but we are obliged to turn back at last, and grope our way out by the same way we got in.

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On the supposition that evil was absolutely inevitable, or that the Divine being resolved to permit it, for some reasons consistent with all His attributes, but totally unknown to us, then indeed it is not unworthy of the character of Him whose prerogative it is to call light out of darkness,' to subordinate the evil to good, and to yoke the great demon to some useful labour; but to suppose it the object of suffering some worlds to be miserable, to render more worlds happy, will always leave a difficulty as trying as the original knot, and not less requiring the sharpest logical shears to cut it.

Leibnitz endeavours to show that evil was inevitable,-natural, as a certain consequence of moral evil, and moral, as a possible consequence of metaphysical imperfection. But we must confess that, in our judgment, he wholly fails to show it. Even Omnipotence, says he, cannot work contradictions. The cause of evil is privation of perfection, and that which is finite cannot

have perfection. Most learnedly said, profound metaphysician! But where is the difficulty, especially on your favourite hypothesis of moral necessity ?-in other words, that the only freedom which man can possess, or which is intelligible, is, that he should have the power of acting as he wills, while the will itself is infallibly determined by motives,-where, we ask, is the difficulty of supposing all intelligent beings so constituted, as that, while still perfectly free on this hypothesis, those motives only should determine them which should determine them for uniform good? They cannot be otherwise than free, you say, while they do not act from physical constraint; and in supposing them so morally constituted as uniformly to obey the dictates of reason, where is there any difficulty, which can be shown to amount to a contradiction, or to limit even Omnipotence? If there be such difficulty, show it. Myriads of beings, Leibnitz admits, must have been so constituted to ensure that vast excess of good, which reduces his evil to a vanishing quantity; and why might not all have been so constituted?

In this point of view, the advocates of the doctrine of moral necessity, or in other words, (for it is a pity that the ambiguous term, necessity,' was ever admitted into the controversy,) of the certainty of all volition as being dependent on motives, do not, to say the least, alleviate the difficulties connected with the 'origin of evil.' That hypothesis was, perhaps, first systematically and fully exhibited by Leibnitz; certainly no previous metaphysician, in as far as we know, had made such strenuous or rational efforts to reclaim it from the charge of encouraging vice as inevitable, or to exempt it from the liability to be confounded with vulgar fatalism.* Again and again does he show that, admitting the doctrine in full, it leaves human conduct just under the same laws and influences as before; impairs no sanction of the one, and diminishes no tittle of the other. Hence exhortations, counsels, persuasion, discipline, chastisement, are full as necessary as ever. Throughout his metaphysical writings, his favourite views on this subject appear; in his Theodicée, in his Appendix to that work, in his Annotations on Locke's Essay, especially on the chapter on Power; and in the masterly criticisms in both these works on the theories of Hobbes* and other

*We cannot think that Mr Dugald Stewart, in his truly admirable remarks on Leibnitz, has done justice to the views of the latter on this subject when he attempts to identify his doctrine with vulgar fatalism. He says, the scheme of optimism, as proposed by Leibnitz, is completely subversive of the cardinal truths of man's free-will and moral

Necessarians. So comprehensive is his survey of this subject, that there is hardly a fragment of Jonathan Edwards' great work on the Freedom of the Will, which may not be found stated with almost equal clearness in some part or other of the writings of Leibnitz; if not with such rigid logical concatenation, yet with a far greater fecundity and aptness of illustration. The great Transatlantic Divine does not, more completely than Leibnitz, demolish that great phantom of the liberty of indifference,' which asserts the will to be free only when it acts absolutely without motive, and its highest prerogative to consist in its emancipation from all reason; which, in fact, makes man, as a condition of his responsibility, act in such a way, that if he could act at all, his acts would be absolutely destitute of all moral quality. Whether Jonathan Edwards ever read the Theodicée we know not; but if so, he must have been under no little obligations to it.

It may be thought at first, that if we could but admit that chimera of a liberty of indifference,' it were easy to account for the origin of evil, or indeed the origin of any thing else; for who could account for the acts of a will which would be a synonym for caprice; or wonder that man, poised for a moment in such a state of unstable equilibrium,' should fall? But then, alas! we fear there would be just as much difficulty in proving the existence of

agency.' He admits, that it was viewed in a very different light by the author,' but affirms that in the judgment of the most impartial and profound inquirers, it leads, by a short and demonstrative process, to the annihilation of all moral distinctions.'— Preliminary Dissertations to the Seventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, p. 127.

It does not appear to us impossible for any one to hold the opinions of Leibnitz on this subject, and yet consistently to deny that demonstrative process to which Mr Stewart refers; nor do we think that the latter (habitually candid as he is) has duly appreciated Leibnitz's jealous caution, which breaks out even in the Preface to his Theodicée, where he has stated, (pp. 14-19,) with great clearness and eloquence, the differences between the fatum Mahometanum and his scheme of moral necessity. He even goes to the verge of what some may think a selfdestructive candour. Il est faux que l'évènement arrive quoiqu'on fasse; il arrivera, parcequ'on fait ce que y mêne: et si l'évènement est écrit, la cause qui le fera arriver est écrite aussi. Ainsi la liaison des effets et des causes, bien loin d'établir la doctrine d'une nécessité préjudiciale à la pratique, sert à la détruire,' Sir James Mackintosh has made some most judicious observations on this subject, in his admirable Review, in this Journal, of Mr Stewart's above-mentioned Dissertation. He concurs with us in thinking, that justice has not been done to Leibnitz on this point. Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvi.

this nonentity, or the possibility of its existing in a sentient and intelligent creature surrounded with such enticing forms of real and apparent good, or the moral quality of the blind volitions decreed by it, or the propriety of punishing or rewarding its absurdities-as can be found in the Origin of Evil itself. It would be appealing to that Anarch old,'

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Who, by deciding, more embroils the fray.'

Thus are we reduced to inextricable difficulties on all sides. But let us be comforted. We are in no worse condition with respect to this great mystery of the origin of evil,' except that it is connected with misery, than with similar inextricable difficulties in every other field of speculation; and which, wherever we speculate, introduce us at last to two propositions, which seem almost parts of a contradiction; but of which we are assured there must be a reconciling harmony, though we cannot detect it. We are inclosed in a narrow prison, shut in with adamantine bars and impassable walls; and when we gaze through the chinks which here and there let in what is after all but a mental twilight, we gaze into the depths of infinity. This every speculator finds. The Chemist analyzes material substances, and analyzes again the products of his analysis, but cannot come to an end. He seems ever almost on the brink of discovering the ultimate organization of matter, which yet eludes and will probably ever elude him; he finds, as Bacon truly said, that 'the subtilty of nature far surpasses the subtilty of either sense or intellect.' The arguments for the infinite divisibility of matter, and for its not being infinitely divisible, are both unanswerable, and yet answer one another. That there is something we call a Cause, we believe, but cannot perceive or trace any thing more than uniform antecedence and sequence. How two substances, such as mind and matter-if they be supposed essentially different -can act upon one another, is an inscrutable mystery; and yet those find themselves pressed with difficulties equally insurmountable, who, to get rid of it, annihilate matter and substitute ideas for it, or annihilate mind and make matter think. In like manner, we cannot refute the doctrine of the absolute certainty of human volitions, as dependent on motive; and can as little eradicate the consciousness which proclaims us to be free, and responsible for our freedom. We see the reasonableness of either assertion, but the nexus which binds them in harmony entirely baffles our perceptions.

Happy is he who, recognizing the limits imposed on the specu lative powers of man, refuses to chafe at those narrow limits; and, instead of wearing his strength by fruitless efforts to shake the iron portals, or dashing himself against the walls of his pri

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