It requires a just hand, said she continuing her discourse, to weigh & divide the good from evil--On the earth they are inextricably entangled and if you would cast away what there appears an evil a multitude of beneficial causes or effects cling to it & mock your labour--When I was on earth and have walked in a solitary country during the silence of night & have beheld the multitude of stars, the soft radiance of the moon reflected on the sea, which was studded by lovely islands--When I have felt the soft breeze steal across my cheek & as the words of love it has soothed & cherished me--then my mind seemed almost to quit the body that confined it to the earth & with a quick mental sense to mingle with the scene that I hardly saw--I felt--Then I have exclaimed, oh world how beautiful thou art!--Oh brightest universe behold thy worshiper!--spirit of beauty & of sympathy which pervades all things, & now lifts my soul as with wings, how have you animated the light & the breezes!--Deep & inexplicable spirit give me words to express my adoration; my mind is hurried away but with language I cannot tell how I feel thy loveliness! Silence or the song of the nightingale the momentary apparition of some bird that flies quietly past--all seems animated with thee & more than all the deep sky studded with worlds!”--If the winds roared & tore the sea and the dreadful lightnings seemed falling around me--still love was mingled with the sacred terror I felt; the majesty of loveliness was deeply impressed on me--So also I have felt when I have seen a lovely countenance--or heard solemn music or the eloquence of divine wisdom flowing from the lips of one of its worshippers--a lovely animal or even the graceful undulations of trees & inanimate objects have excited in me the same deep feeling of love & beauty; a feeling which while it made me alive & eager to seek the cause & animator of the scene, yet satisfied me by its very depth as if I had already found the solution to my enquires [_sic_] & as if in feeling myself a part of the great whole I had found the truth & secret of the universe--But when retired in my cell I have studied & contemplated the various motions and actions in the world the weight of evil has confounded me--If I thought of the creation I saw an eternal chain of evil linked one to the other--from the great whale who in the sea swallows & destroys multitudes & the smaller fish that live on him also & torment him to madness--to the cat whose pleasure it is to torment her prey I saw the whole creation filled with pain--each creature seems to exist through the misery of another & death & havoc is the watchword of the animated world--And Man also--even in Athens the most civilized spot on the earth what a multitude of mean passions--envy, malice--a restless desire to depreciate all that was great and good did I see--And in the dominions of the great being I saw man [reduced?][97] far below the animals of the field preying on one anothers [_sic_]