The reason why the good-will of the individual is so often lost for this world, is that it is only the will of the individual, and that the will of the majority does not coincide with it; therefore it has no consequences but those which belong to a future world.  Hence, even the passions and vices of men appear to cooeperate in the promotion of a better state, not in and for themselves—­in this sense good can never come out of evil—­but by furnishing a counter-poise to opposite vices, and finally annihilating those vices and themselves by their preponderance.  Oppression could never have gained the upper hand unless cowardice, and baseness, and mutual distrust had prepared the way for it.  It will continue to increase until it eradicates cowardice and the slavish mind; and despair re-awakens the courage that was lost.  Then the two antagonistic vices will have destroyed each other, and the noblest in all human relations, permanent freedom, will have come forth from them.

The actions of free beings have, strictly speaking, no other consequences than those which affect other free beings.  For only in such, and for such, does a world exist; and that, wherein all agree, is the world.  But they have consequences in free agents only by means of the infinite Will, by which all individuals exist.  A call, a revelation of that Will to us, is always a requirement to perform some particular duty.  Hence, even that which we call evil in the world, the consequence of the abuse of freedom, exists only through him; and it exists for all, for whom it exists, only so far as it imposes duties upon them.  Did it not fall within the eternal plan of our moral education and the education of our whole race that precisely these duties should be laid upon us, they would not have been imposed; and that whereby they are imposed, and which we call evil, would never have been.  In this view, everything which takes place is good, and absolutely accordant with the best ends.  There is but one world possible—­a thoroughly good one.  Everything that occurs in this world conduces to the reformation and education of man, and, by means of that, to the furtherance of his earthly destination.

It is this higher world-plan that we call Nature, when we say Nature leads men through want to industry, through the evils of general disorder to a righteous polity, through the miseries of their perpetual wars to final, ever-during peace.  Thy will, O Infinite, thy providence alone, is this higher Nature!  This too is best understood by artless simplicity, which regards this life as a place of discipline and education, as a school for eternity; which, in all the fortunes it experiences, the most trivial as well as the most momentous, beholds thy ordinations designed for good; and which firmly believes that all things will work together for good to those who love their duty and know thee.

O truly have I spent the former days of my life in darkness!  Truly have I heaped errors upon errors, and thought myself wise!  Now only out of thy mouth, wondrous Spirit, I fully understand the doctrine which seemed so strange to me![3] although my understanding had nothing to oppose to it.  For now only I overlook it, in its whole extent, in its deepest meaning, and in all its consequences.