English
A circumstance which obscures this otherwise obvious truth from us, when we reason about the world, is, that as the divine work is by way of intelligence, so it betrays nothing of what we should call effort, but uses what we call capacities as not only instruments of its will but also as signs, if we are wise to read them, of its unseen forethought. Hence the silentness of its operation makes you liken it to a stream from a source, rather than a work from a worker. But it does not any the less really follow from what I have just been saying, that the only true cause even of a system of generations of life and death will be properly a causer of causes, or one to whom we may not only trace all intermediate links, as to a beginning, but to whom we may ascribe that self-determining activity which belongs to nothing less than mind, and which we call personality ; that is to say, our true origin must go back to or imply an originator. I am not sure that a persuasion of this truth is not thrown around us as it were direct from God our Maker, by the natural experiences which we acquire like second instincts through the daily contacts of life more vividly than by any laboured arguments. Perhaps you see in the structure of languages, as obviously as anywhere, the common confession to CAUSE AND CAUSER. MAKING AND MAKER. 191 this effect. You have in Sanscrit, as well as in all the languages akin to it, from Persia to the Himalaya in the East, and to the extreme shores of Portugal and Ireland in the West, a kind of noun applied to the Maker or causer of anything, distinct either in gender or in termination from nouns which describe instru- mental agencies. Brahm^ the creator is with you a masculine noun, though Brahm, or potential spirit, is neuter ; but all your names as applied to any one whom you suppose as creator are masculine. So are ours, and with us too in general they have a termination which is among nouns that which the active voice is among the inflexions of the verb. H9W well this unconscious testimony of language falls in with what I have said both of causation and of proper agency. It is not the thing done or made, nor the power of doing or making, but the doer or maker whom we reverence. It is only in the deep volition and the range of motives, whether more or less, which may be ascribed to a doer, that we find an adequate explanation of anything done. Perhaps also the wisdom of the Vais^shica may here be alluded to as being somewhat to the point. You remember how in their aphorisms it is argued that there can be no quality without a substance, or no property without an owner, and, for example, we cannot call the Deity either power or thought, but must acknowledge Him powerful and thinking. Thus, even by the necessity of logic, no less than by the instinctive affirmation of our hearts, we find ourselves led on imtil we ascribe person- ality to the Divine Being, and find it impossible to acquiesce in any vague pictures of infinity. For we cannot remove from our notion of the Deity anything essential to a personal agent (unless indeed we suppose something transcendent in place of it), with- out removing what would alone be an adequate cause of effects, for which your theory requires some cause as much as mine does. Thus it seems that all our thoughts on the nature of agency, and even logic, whether philosophical or instinctive, lead us beyond Pracriti to a true Iswara or divine Creator. But I have been somewhat long upon this argument from causation, which perhaps 192 DIVINE DESIGN, AND DIFFICULTY OF EVIL. in its naked thominess comparatively few persons will find attractive. Certainly it would become much stronger if it were applied at length, not to mere physical life, but to the history of mankind and the moral aspects of the world. Here, however, all that was said to Dr Wolff applies sufficiently for me to pass lightly over this part ; only, if we find in ourselves traces of justice and the love of mercy, with forethought and the power of moral action, it would be absurd for us to perform Srdd^dha, under the idea of knowing our first parent, to any being which did not possess these qualities in at least an equal degree. It is not mere power, considering it as blind, nor fer- tility, nor expanse, nor, in short, infinity of anything less than that which is noblest in us as moral agents, before which I could bring myself to bow down and worship. You also, I conceive, will admit that if the world is governed by Mind at all, in the sense of a moral agent, that Mind will be of the highest kind and truly adorable ; for, in fact, we have not so much disputed on the point of power or of infinity, as on the point of conscious providence. " There seems to be only one reason of weight, in addition to those already mentioned, which leads you to deny such a creator and governor by foresight as I contend for. You said that if the world had been designed by divine wisdom, we should not have found such evil in it as now exists in manifold forms ; especially you seem to be repelled by the fact of animals preying upon each other. The allegation of evil, however, in some shape, has been the difficulty all the world over with those who refused to find in the world evidence of a Creator. Are we then to suppose that the critics who thus censure the course of nature are themselves free from the general taint of evil which they find around ? You probably would not say so, for you con- ceive the actions of a man to be so influenced by Pracriti as to be not quite his own, or so at least as not to concern his soul ; but since they partake of Pracriti, they partake of its passion and darkness. What then if these judgments which condemn the EXTENUATIONS OP EVIL. 193 world should themselves be dark and passionate. I confess I think one who attempts to charge the handiwork of the Supreme Being with crookedness should himself be perfectly straight ; or, at least, he should consider how liable his opinion must be to error, not merely from the limited field of his vision, but from the absolute distortion which may be inherent in his way of viewing things. In order to ascertain if this is so, I should like to ask what is evil, or whether anything is meant by the word more than the absence of good. Suppose, for ex- ample, you were going to Benares, you might find hindrances in the way, which might make your walk slower, and give you occasionally labour without progress. Yet I do not know that such hindrances need be evil in themselves, except so far as they impede your journey ; but I can even conceive they may be very usefrd for some other end, or in their bearing upon something else. But, if there is to be any stability in the world at all, it would not be possible that things should be arranged for one purpose, and be simultaneously done away with, because they did not suit another. The help in one way may be a hindrance in another, or, in fact, one man's meat may be another's poison : but though in the multiplicity of uses to which objects may be put; some may be contrary to our wish, it does not follow that the things themselves are evil. Again, you might have a weak- ness in your limbs, which, together with such impediments, might make you hang back and even recede from your object. Here then would be not only hindrance, but backsliding. You will say there is something positive ; yet I cannot for the life of me see what weakness is, except the absence of strength, just as the Nysiya truly teaches, that lightness is the absence of weight. It would not, therefore, be life, but it would be not having enough of life, or, in other words, not having enough of that which I say comes of divine support, and which you say is evil, that you would really be sufiering from ; so that, according to your doc- trine, the absence of evil is an evil. Again, in going forward, it might happen to you to miss your road and step aside. Of course M. P. 13 194 VARIETY OF RELATION, SHORTCOMING, PERVEKSION.