d things, and, therefore, cannot be prevented,
by any means whatever, unless by not creating them at all."

These instances are used, instead of Pope's oak and weeds, or Jupiter
and his satellites; but neither Pope, nor this writer, have much
contributed to solve the difficulty. Perfection, or imperfection, of
unconscious beings has no meaning, as referred to themselves; the base
and the treble are equally perfect; the mean and magnificent apartments
feel no pleasure or pain from the comparison. Pope might ask the weed,
why it was less than the oak? but the weed would never ask the question
for itself. The base and treble differ only to the hearer, meanness and
magnificence only to the inhabitant. There is no evil but must inhere in
a conscious being, or be referred to it; that is, evil must be felt,
before it is evil. Yet, even on this subject, many questions might be
offered, which human understanding has not yet answered, and which the
present haste of this extract will not suffer me to dilate.

He proceeds to an humble detail of Pope's opinion: "The universe is a
system, whose very essence consists in subordination; a scale of beings
descending, by insensible degrees, from infinite perfection to absolute
nothing; in which, though we may justly expect to find perfection in the
whole, could we possibly comprehend it; yet would it be the highest
absurdity to hope for it in all its parts, because the beauty and
happiness of the whole depend altogether on the just inferiority of its
parts; that is, on the comparative imperfections of the several beings
of which it is composed.

"It would have been no more an instance of God's wisdom to have created
no beings, but of the highest and most perfect order, than it would be
of a painter's art to cover his whole piece with one single colour, the
most beautiful he could compose. Had he confined himself to such,
nothing could have existed but demi-gods, or archangels, and, then, all
inferior orders must have been void and uninhabited; but as it is,
surely, more agreeable to infinite benevolence, that all these should be
filled up with beings capable of enjoying happiness themselves, and
contributing to that of others, they must, necessarily, be filled with
inferior beings; that is, with such as are less perfect, but from whose
existence, notwithstanding that less perfection, more felicity, upon the
whole, accrues to the universe, than if no such had been created. It is,
moreove