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impressions for the first time. Look round the world--observe its
order--its regularity--its design. Something must have created it--the
design speaks a designer: in that certainty we first touch land. But
what is that something?--A god, you cry. Stay--no confused
and confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know,
we can know, nothing, save these attributes--power and unvarying
regularity--stern, crushing, relentless regularity--heeding no
individual cases--rolling--sweeping--burning on; no matter what
scattered hearts, severed from the general mass, fall ground and
scorched beneath its wheels. The mixture of evil with good--the
existence of suffering and of crime--in all times have perplexed the
wise. They created a god--they supposed him benevolent. How then came
this evil? why did he permit it--nay, why invent, why perpetuate it? To
account for this, the Persian creates a second spirit, whose nature is
evil, and supposes a continual war between that and the god of good. In
our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians image a similar
demon. Perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders us!--folly that arose
from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a corporeal, a human
being, of this unknown power--that clothes the Invisible with attributes
and a nature similar to the Seen. No: to this designer let us give a
name that does not command our bewildering associations, and the mystery
becomes more clear--that name is NECESSITY. Necessity, say the Greeks,
compels the gods. Then why the gods?--their agency becomes
unnecessary--dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we
see--power, regularity--these two qualities make its nature. Would you
ask more?--you can learn nothing: whether it be eternal--whether it
compel us, its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we
call death--we cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen,
unfathomable power, and come to that which, to our eyes, is the great
minister of its functions. This we can task more, from this we can learn
more: its evidence is around us--its name is NATURE. The error of the
sages has been to direct their researches to the attributes of
necessity, where all is gloom and blindness. Had they confined their
researches to Nature--what of knowledge might we not already have
achieved? Here patience, examination, are never directed in vain. We
see what we explore; our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes