pel our recognition, the justice necessarily resulting
from those attributes, absolutely requires another life, not for man
only, but for every living thing of the inferior orders. That, alike in
the animal and the vegetable world, we see one individual rendered, by
circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly wretched compared to its
neighbours--one only exists as the prey of another--even a plant suffers
from disease till it perishes prematurely, while the plant next to it
rejoices in its vitality and lives out its happy life free from a pang.
That it is an erroneous analogy from human infirmities to reply by
saying that the Supreme Being only acts by general laws, thereby making
his own secondary causes so potent as to mar the essential kindness of
the First Cause; and a still meaner and more ignorant conception of the
All-Good, to dismiss with a brief contempt all consideration of justice
for the myriad forms into which He has infused life, and assume that
justice is only due to the single product of the An. There is no small
and no great in the eyes of the divine Life-Giver. But once grant that
nothing, however humble, which feels that it lives and suffers, can
perish through the series of ages, that all its suffering here, if
continuous from the moment of its birth to that of its transfer to
another form of being, would be more brief compared with eternity than
the cry of the new-born is compared to the whole life of a man; and once
suppose that this living thing retains its sense of identity when so
transformed (for without that sense it could be aware of no future
being), and though, indeed, the fulfilment of divine justice is removed
from the scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be
uniform and universal, and not varying and partial, as it would be
if acting only upon general and secondary laws; because such perfect
justice flows of necessity from perfectness of knowledge to conceive,
perfectness of love to will, and perfectness of power to complete it.

However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya may be, it tends perhaps to
confirm politically the systems of government which, admitting different
degrees of wealth, yet establishes perfect equality in rank, exquisite
mildness in all relations and intercourse, and tenderness to all created
things which the good of the community does not require them to destroy.
And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a
cankered flower may