pain or uneasiness
under the absence of it. To avoid evil and to pursue good seem to be
the great duty and business of man, and this world appears to be
peculiarly calculated to afford opportunity of the most unremitted
exertion of this kind, and it is by this exertion, by these stimulants,
that mind is formed. If Locke's idea be just, and there is great reason
to think that it is, evil seems to be necessary to create exertion, and
exertion seems evidently necessary to create mind.

The necessity of food for the support of life gives rise, probably, to
a greater quantity of exertion than any other want, bodily or mental.
The Supreme Being has ordained that the earth shall not produce good in
great quantities till much preparatory labour and ingenuity has been
exercised upon its surface. There is no conceivable connection to our
comprehensions, between the seed and the plant or tree that rises from
it. The Supreme Creator might, undoubtedly, raise up plants of all
kinds, for the use of his creatures, without the assistance of those
little bits of matter, which we call seed, or even without the
assisting labour and attention of man. The processes of ploughing and
clearing the ground, of collecting and sowing seeds, are not surely for
the assistance of God in his creation, but are made previously
necessary to the enjoyment of the blessings of life, in order to rouse
man into action, and form his mind to reason.

To furnish the most unremitted excitements of this kind, and to urge
man to further the gracious designs of Providence by the full
cultivation of the earth, it has been ordained that population should
increase much faster than food. This general law (as it has appeared in
the former parts of this Essay) undoubtedly produces much partial evil,
but a little reflection may, perhaps, satisfy us, that it produces a
great overbalance of good. Strong excitements seem necessary to create
exertion, and to direct this exertion, and form the reasoning faculty,
it seems absolutely necessary, that the Supreme Being should act always
according to general laws. The constancy of the laws of nature, or the
certainty with which we may expect the same effects from the same
causes, is the foundation of the faculty of reason. If in the ordinary
course of things, the finger of God were frequently visible, or to
speak more correctly, if God were frequently to change his purpose (for
the finger of God is, indeed, visible in every blade