tures (monads as he calls
them) which, though necessarily obeying the laws of their existence.
yet obey them with a "character of spontaneity," which although
"automata," are yet voluntary agents; and therefore, by the
consent of their hearts to their actions, entitle themselves to moral
praise or moral censure. The question is, whether by the mere
co-existence of these opposite qualifies in the
monad man, he has proved that such qualities can coexist. In
our opinion, it is like speaking of a circular ellipse, or of a
quadrilateral triangle. There is a plain dilemma in these matters from
which no philosophy can extricate itself. If man can incur guilt,
their actions might be other than they are. If they cannot act
otherwise than they do, they cannot incur guilt. So at least it
appears to us; yet, in the darkness of our knowledge, we would
not complain merely of a theory, and if our earthly life were all
in all, and the grave remained the extreme horizon of our hopes
and fears, the "Harmonic Pre-etablie," might be tolerated as
credible, and admired as ingenious and beautiful. It is when
forcibly attached to a creed of the future, with which it has no
natural connection, that it assumes its repulsive features. The
world may be in the main good; while the good, from the
unknown condition of its existence, may be impossible without some
intermixture of evil; and although Leibnitz was at times staggered
even himself by the misery and wickedness which he witnessed,
and was driven to comfort himself with the reflection that this
earth might be but one world in the midst of the universe, and
perhaps the single chequered exception in an infinity of stainless
globes, yet we would not quarrel with a hypothesis because it was
imperfect; it might pass as a possible conjecture on a dark subject,
when nothing better than conjecture was attainable.

But as soon as we are told that the evil in these "automata"
of mankind, being, as it is, a necessary condition of this world
which God has called into being, is yet infinitely detestable to
God; that the creatures who suffer under the accursed necessity
of committing sin are infinitely guilty in God's eyes, for doing
what they have no power to avoid, and may therefore be justly
punished in everlasting fire; our hearts recoil against the paradox.

No disciple of Leibnitz will maintain, that unless he had found
this belief in an eternity of penal retribution an article of the
popular cre