If you feel not human misery yourself, cried DEMEA, I congratulate you on so happy a singularity.  Others, seemingly the most prosperous, have not been ashamed to vent their complaints in the most melancholy strains.  Let us attend to the great, the fortunate emperor, Charles V, when, tired with human grandeur, he resigned all his extensive dominions into the hands of his son.  In the last harangue which he made on that memorable occasion, he publicly avowed, that the greatest prosperities which he had ever enjoyed, had been mixed with so many adversities, that he might truly say he had never enjoyed any satisfaction or contentment.  But did the retired life, in which he sought for shelter, afford him any greater happiness?  If we may credit his son’s account, his repentance commenced the very day of his resignation.

CICERO’s fortune, from small beginnings, rose to the greatest lustre and renown; yet what pathetic complaints of the ills of life do his familiar letters, as well as philosophical discourses, contain?  And suitably to his own experience, he introduces Cato, the great, the fortunate Cato, protesting in his old age, that had he a new life in his offer, he would reject the present.

Ask yourself, ask any of your acquaintance, whether they would live over again the last ten or twenty years of their life.  No! but the next twenty, they say, will be better: 

    And from the dregs of life, hope to receive
    What the first sprightly running could not give.

Thus at last they find (such is the greatness of human misery, it reconciles even contradictions), that they complain at once of the shortness of life, and of its vanity and sorrow.

And is it possible, cleanthes, said Philo, that after all these reflections, and infinitely more, which might be suggested, you can still persevere in your Anthropomorphism, and assert the moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy, and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in human creatures?  His power we allow is infinite:  whatever he wills is executed:  but neither man nor any other animal is happy:  therefore he does not will their happiness.  His wisdom is infinite:  He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end:  But the course of Nature tends not to human or animal felicity:  therefore it is not established for that purpose.  Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these.  In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men?

EPICURUS’s old questions are yet unanswered.  Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent.  Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent.  Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?