On the concurrence, then, of these four circumstances, does all or the greatest part of natural evil depend.  Were all living creatures incapable of pain, or were the world administered by particular volitions, evil never could have found access into the universe:  and were animals endowed with a large stock of powers and faculties, beyond what strict necessity requires; or were the several springs and principles of the universe so accurately framed as to preserve always the just temperament and medium; there must have been very little ill in comparison of what we feel at present.  What then shall we pronounce on this occasion?  Shall we say that these circumstances are not necessary, and that they might easily have been altered in the contrivance of the universe?  This decision seems too presumptuous for creatures so blind and ignorant.  Let us be more modest in our conclusions.  Let us allow, that, if the goodness of the Deity (I mean a goodness like the human) could be established on any tolerable reasons a priori, these phenomena, however untoward, would not be sufficient to subvert that principle; but might easily, in some unknown manner, be reconcilable to it.  But let us still assert, that as this goodness is not antecedently established, but must be inferred from the phenomena, there can be no grounds for such an inference, while there are so many ills in the universe, and while these ills might so easily have been remedied, as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject.  I am Sceptic enough to allow, that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes.  Such a conclusion cannot result from Scepticism, but must arise from the phenomena, and from our confidence in the reasonings which we deduce from these phenomena.

Look round this universe.  What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active!  You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity.  But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding.  How hostile and destructive to each other!  How insufficient all of them for their own happiness!  How contemptible or odious to the spectator!  The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!

Here the MANICHAEAN system occurs as a proper hypothesis to solve the difficulty:  and no doubt, in some respects, it is very specious, and has more probability than the common hypothesis, by giving a plausible account of the strange mixture of good and ill which appears in life.  But if we consider, on the other hand, the perfect uniformity and agreement of the parts of the universe, we shall not discover in it any marks of the combat of a malevolent with a benevolent