In the course of his enquiry as to the justice of the supreme Being, M. D'Alembert revives the old spirit of Manicheism as to the good and the evil principle, and asks the well known question why, if the Creator is benevolent in his designs, was it necessary that there should be such a thing as evil existing in the world? Why the supreme being should have permitted the existence of a power whose only employment is to introduce pain and misery and as it were to spoil the fair work of his hands? Then naturally enough follows another question, namely, if there was to exist an evil spirit superior in power to man, why should man have been created?-Since the chances of his turning out well must be so greatly against him. The whole drift indeed of the question is summed up by D'Alembert in a quotation from Milton's Paradise Lost-being the speech addressed by Adam to God upon his expulsion from Paradise:

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay,

To mould me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious 'garden? As my will

Concurr'd not to my being, it were but right

And equal to reduce me to my dust;

Desirous to resign and render back
All I received; unable to perform

Thy terms, too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added

The sense of endless woes ?" *

Why then does evil exist, and why are we obliged to cope with it? such is the drift of the enquiry. We cannot perhaps give a direct anbut if we take the trouble to examine the matter a little deeper than the argument contained

swer,

*It might have been added, that Milton gives to Adam the good sense to correct himself on this subject a few lines below, and to acknowledge the justice of the Divine will: he says, addressing himself,

"

"God made thee of choice his own, and of his own,

To serve him; thy reward was of his grace,

Thy punishment then justly is at his will.

Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair.”

Par. Lost, x. 766.

A passage from Lord Byron's Cain might be quoted as breathing a complaint of the same nature with the speech of Adam against his Maker, without, however, giving any amending after-thought, as Milton has thought it proper to do. Lord Byron, however, was not as Milton was, (and this very passage is a proof,) really learned on both sides of the subject; he only knew that there was a difficulty, and hazarded a fling at it.

in this pamphlet has done, we may possibly be able to discover something like a sufficient reason. We must not expect to be fully satisfied on all points connected with such a subject on this side of the grave, but we may regard it as a step gained if we can in any degree appease our present curiosity.

In looking then around us we cannot help observing, that there is to all appearance a constant and unremitting struggle carried on between all the different parts of nature: as if the good and evil principle, (or what may be considered analogous to it,) were designedly matched together, and the only aim in the creation were to make and to mar.

It is not observable as in this instance simply in the moral world, but we see a similar process in operation full as extensively in the physical world also. We find throughout the whole detail of the creation, as far as matters have yet been subjected to our notice, a regular system of this sort to be established: a constant arrangement of certain productive powers and capacities on the one side, and as constantly of countervailing checks and destructive powers

on the other. If we look to the animal kingdom (as it is philosophically termed) to the birds, beasts, fishes, insects &c. we see throughout all their several genera and species one regular course of destruction, and reproduction, devouring, and devoured in their turn, from the highest order to the lowest. Neither does it seem an accidental circumstance, but the evident design of nature, the very condition on which animal existence is made to depend. So nice a calculation is observed indeed with regard to such an order of things, that the smaller beings, which are most liable to be preyed upon, produce a countless abundance of offspring and fill the earth, the air, the water, with their fruitfulness: while we see the ranks of larger beings generate a less numerous progeny in proportion as fewer of their number are likely to be preyed upon. All this is contrived purposely, as it should seem, to keep up a constant operation of the destructive and the renovating principle; or as we may term it, of good and evil.

If we look to the vegetable kingdom, we find a similar order of things, established there,

leaves, fruit, branches, every part is made subject to the operation of certain laws, acting in this fashion; and the vegetable is made subject not only in common with the animal. world to death as to itself taken as an whole, but every part of that same vegetable is seen to be suffering hourly changes, and illustrating what has been asserted here, in the fullest possible way. Some portions become food for animals undergoing a chemical change, that converts it into the manure to afford the food of life to another race of vegetables; others left to the chemical action of atmospheric influences is changed by decay, and all become in their several parts as well as in their whole substance convertible to purposes of corruption and renovation.

Even that which is the chief support both of animal and vegetable life, the air of the atmosphere is subject from them both to a perpetual action and reaction, and seems to follow this common law. As it becomes contaminated and loses one of its constituent parts by being used as the breath of living creatures, so this contamination is effaced and another produced by the discharge of its functions with regard to