So much for the first point, which, after all, is but of little moment.  It is more important to ascertain whether, in the hands of Leibnitz, this theory can be any better reconciled with what is commonly meant by religion; whether, that is, the ideas of obedience and disobedience, merit and demerit, judgment and retribution, have any proper place under it.  Spinoza makes no pretension to anything of the kind, and openly declares that these ideas are ideas merely, and human mistakes.  Leibnitz, in opposition to him, endeavours to re-establish them in the following manner.  It is true he conceives that the system of the universe has been arranged and predetermined from the moment at which it was launched into being; from the moment at which God selected it, with all its details, as the best which could exist; but it is carried on by the action of individual creatures (monads as he calls them) which, though necessarily obeying the laws of their existence. yet obey them with a “character of spontaneity,” which although “automata,” are yet voluntary agents; and therefore, by the consent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moral praise or moral censure.  The question is, whether by the mere co-existence of these opposite qualifies in the monad man, he has proved that such qualities can coexist.  In our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or of a quadrilateral triangle.  There is a plain dilemma in these matters from which no philosophy can extricate itself.  If man can incur guilt, their actions might be other than they are.  If they cannot act otherwise than they do, they cannot incur guilt.  So at least it appears to us; yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would not complain merely of a theory, and if our earthly life were all in all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopes and fears, the “Harmonic Pre-etablie,” might be tolerated as credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful.  It is when forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has no natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features.  The world may be in the main good; while the good, from the unknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without some intermixture of evil; and although Leibnitz was at times staggered even himself by the misery and wickedness which he witnessed, and was driven to comfort himself with the reflection that this earth might be but one world in the midst of the universe, and perhaps the single chequered exception in an infinity of stainless globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because it was imperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark subject, when nothing better than conjecture was attainable.

But as soon as we are told that the evil in these “automata” of mankind, being, as it is, a necessary condition of this world which God has called into being, is yet infinitely detestable to God; that the creatures who suffer under the accursed necessity of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God’s eyes, for doing what they have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justly punished in everlasting fire; our hearts recoil against the paradox.