more
properly to be ranged under the first. Nor is this a mere question of
classification: it affects the whole scope of the argument. The second
of the above-mentioned classes comprehends both the physical evils which
human agency causes, but which it would have no power to cause unless
the qualities of matter were such as to produce pain, privation and
death; and also the moral evil of guilt which may possibly exist
independent of material agency, but which, whether independent or not
upon that physical action, is quite separable from it, residing wholly
in the mind. Thus a person who destroys the life of another produces
physical evil by means of the constitution of matter, and moral evil
is the source of his wicked action. The true arrangement then is this:
Physical evil is that which depends on the constitution of matter,
or only is so far connected with the constitution of mind as that the
nature and existence of a sentient being must be assumed in order to its
mischief being felt. And this physical evil is of two kinds; that which
originates in human action, and that which is independent of human
action, befalling us from the unalterable course of nature. Of the
former class are the pains, privations and destruction inflicted by men
one upon another; of the latter class are diseases, old age and death.
Moral evil consists in the crimes, whether of commission or omission,
which men are guilty of--including under the latter head those
sufferings which we endure from ill-regulated minds through want of
fortitude or self-control. It is clear that as far as the question
of the origin of evil is concerned, the first of these two classes,
physical evil, depends upon the properties of matter, and the last
upon those of mind. The second as well as the first subdivision of the
physical class depends upon matter; because, however ill-disposed the
agent's mind may be, he could inflict the mischief only in consequence
of the constitution of matter. Therefore, the Being, who created matter
enabled him to perpetrate the evil, even admitting that this Being did
not, by creating the mind also give rise to the evil disposition; and
admitting that, as far as regards this disposition it has the same
origin with the evil of the second class, or moral evil, the acts of a
rational agent.

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 ag