mediate effects or appearances, it may be so, just as the
hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil to the eater,
though in the one is the protection of the fruit, and in the other its
continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but receives
from nature and from God that which is good for him; while the
Sensualist fills himself "with the husks that the swine did eat."

The three classes may, therefore, be likened to men reaping wheat, of
which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and
straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the
one, and their couch of the other.

Sec. LVII. For instance. We know more certainly every day that whatever
appears to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary
operation; that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the
sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries a
city preserves a thousand from destruction. But the evil is not for the
time less fearful, because we have learned it to be necessary; and we
easily understand the timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which
would withdraw itself from the presence of destruction, and create in
its imagination a world of which the peace should be unbroken, in which
the sky should not darken nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not
change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, however, who
contemplates with an equal mind the alternations of terror and of
beauty; who, not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, can bear also to
watch the bars of twilight narrowing on the horizon; and, not less
sensible to the blessing of the peace of nature, can rejoice in the
magnificence of the ordinances by which that peace is protected and
secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable distance would be
the man who delighted in convulsion and disease for their own sake; who
found his daily food in the disorder of nature mingled with the
suffering of humanity; and watched joyfully at the right hand of the
Angel whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the
corners of the House of feasting were struck by the wind from the
wilderness.

Sec. LVIII. And far more is this true, when the subject of contemplation
is humanity itself. The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly
beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn; but none without their
use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity wit