he 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 perio