n at as great
a distance as ever from the summit of our wishes, but we shall be
perpetually crushed by the recoil of this rock of Sisyphus.

CHAPTER 18

The constant pressure of distress on man, from the principle of
population, seems to direct our hopes to the future--State of trial
inconsistent with our ideas of the foreknowledge of God--The world,
probably, a mighty process for awakening matter into mind--Theory of
the formation of mind--Excitements from the wants of the
body--Excitements from the operation of general laws--Excitements from
the difficulties of life arising from the principle of population.

The view of human life which results from the contemplation of the
constant pressure of distress on man from the difficulty of
subsistence, by shewing the little expectation that he can reasonably
entertain of perfectibility on earth, seems strongly to point his hopes
to the future. And the temptations to which he must necessarily be
exposed, from the operation of those laws of nature which we have been
examining, would seem to represent the world in the light in which it
has been frequently considered, as a state of trial and school of
virtue preparatory to a superior state of happiness. But I hope I shall
be pardoned if I attempt to give a view in some degree different of the
situation of man on earth, which appears to me to be more consistent
with the various phenomena of nature which we observe around us and
more consonant to our ideas of the power, goodness, and foreknowledge
of the Deity.

It cannot be considered as an unimproving exercise of the human mind to
endeavour to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' if we proceed with a
proper distrust of our own understandings and a just sense of our
insufficiency to comprehend the reason of all we see, if we hail every
ray of light with gratitude, and, when no light appears, think that the
darkness is from within and not from without, and bow with humble
deference to the supreme wisdom of him whose 'thoughts are above our
thoughts' 'as the heavens are high above the earth.'

In all our feeble attempts, however, to 'find out the Almighty to
perfection', it seems absolutely necessary that we should reason from
nature up to nature's God and not presume to reason from God to nature.
The moment we allow ourselves to ask why some things are not otherwise,
instead of endeavouring to account for them as they are, we shall never
know where to stop, we shall be