orld to which we are
led by wholly different routes, when we investigate the phenomena around
us and within us.

Suppose, for example, it should be found that there are certain purposes
which can in no way whatever--no conceivable way--be answered except
by placing man in a state of trial or probation; suppose the essential
nature of mind shall be found to be such that it could not in any
way whatever exist so as to be capable of the greatest purity and
improvement--in other words, the highest perfection--without having
undergone a probation; or suppose it should be found impossible to
communicate certain enjoyments to rational and sentient beings
without having previously subjected them to certain trials and certain
sufferings--as, for instance, the pleasures derived from a consciousness
of perfect security, the certainty that we can suffer and perish no
more--this surely is a possible supposition. Now, to continue the last
example--Whatever pleasure there is in the contrast between ease and
previous vexation or pain, whatever enjoyment we derive from the feeling
of absolute security after the vexation and uncertainty of a precarious
state, implies a previous suffering--a previous state of precarious
enjoyment; and not only implies it but necessarily implies it, so that
the power of Omnipotence itself could not convey to us the enjoyment
without having given us the previous suffering. Then is it not possible
that the object of an all powerful and perfectly benevolent being should
be to create like beings, to whom as entire happiness, as complete and
perfect enjoyment, should be given as any created beings--that is, any
being, except the Creator himself--can by possibility enjoy? This is
certainly not only a very possible supposition, but it appears to be
quite consistent with, if it be not a necessary consequence of, his
being perfectly good as well as powerful and wise. Now we have shown,
therefore, that such being supposed the design of Providence, even
Omnipotence itself could not accomplish this design, as far as one great
and important class of enjoyments is concerned, without the previous
existence of some pain, some misery. Whatever gratification arises
from relief--from contrast--from security succeeding anxiety--from
restoration of lost affections--from renewing severed connections--and
many others of a like kind, could not by any possibility be enjoyed
unless the correlative suffering had first been undergone