What answer can be made
to the old commonplace, 'Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly
permitted, but could have prevented it?' Even if we assume that the
inequalities of this life are rectified by some transposition of human
beings in another, still the existence of the very least evil if it
could have been avoided, seems to be at variance with the love and
justice of God. And so we arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying
logic too far, and that the attempt to frame the world according to a
rule of divine perfection is opposed to experience and had better be
given up. The case of the animals is our own. We must admit that the
Divine Being, although perfect himself, has placed us in a state of life
in which we may work together with him for good, but we are very far
from having attained to it.

6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always prone
to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which may serve
to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we cannot
reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward to the
inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing us
nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous notions
respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have the
advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of
immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have
been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of
the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection
of such a doctrine with the existence of a God--also in a less degree
on the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those
whom we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been
said, the figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only
approximations in different forms to an expression of the common
sentiment of the human heart. That we shall live again is far more
certain than that we shall take any particular form of life.

7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further
what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living
being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three
years' old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try
to see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and
space really exist when we take away the limits of them ma