reason why we should contemplate evil
is, that we may bear it better; and I am afraid nothing is much more
placidly endured, for the sake of making others sport.

The first pages of the fourth letter are such, as incline me both to
hope and wish that I shall find nothing to blame in the succeeding part.
He offers a criterion of action, on account of virtue and vice, for
which I have often contended, and which must be embraced by all who are
willing to know, why they act, or why they forbear to give any reason of
their conduct to themselves or others.

"In order to find out the true origin of moral evil, it will be
necessary, in the first place, to enquire into its nature and essence;
or, what it is that constitutes one action evil, and another good.
Various have been the opinions of various authors on this criterion of
virtue; and this variety has rendered that doubtful, which must,
otherwise, have been clear and manifest to the meanest capacity. Some,
indeed, have denied, that there is any such thing, because different
ages and nations have entertained different sentiments concerning it;
but this is just as reasonable, as to assert, that there are neither
sun, moon, nor stars, because astronomers have supported different
systems of the motions and magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some
have placed it in conformity to truth, some to the fitness of things,
and others to the will of God: but all this is merely superficial: they
resolve us not, why truth, or the fitness of things, are either eligible
or obligatory, or why God should require us to act in one manner rather
than another. The true reason of which can possibly be no other than
this, because some actions produce happiness, and others misery; so that
all moral good and evil are nothing more than the production of natural.
This alone it is that makes truth preferable to falsehood, this, that
determines the fitness of things, and this that induces God to command
some actions, and forbid others. They who extol the truth, beauty, and
harmony of virtue, exclusive of its consequences, deal but in pompous
nonsense; and they, who would persuade us, that good and evil are things
indifferent, depending wholly on the will of God, do but confound the
nature of things, as well as all our notions of God himself, by
representing him capable of willing contradictions; that is, that we
should be, and be happy, and, at the same time, that we should torment
and destroy each o