Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
Is there any difference between the particular form of evil which would
be produced by over-population, and other forms of evil which we know
to exist in the world? It is, says Mr Sadler, not a light or transient
evil, but a great and permanent evil. What then? The question of the
origin of evil is a question of ay or no,--not a question of more
or less. If any explanation can be found by which the slightest
inconvenience ever sustained by any sentient being can be reconciled
with the divine attribute of benevolence, that explanation will equally
apply to the most dreadful and extensive calamities that can ever
afflict the human race. The difficulty arises from an apparent
contradiction in terms; and that difficulty is as complete in the case
of a headache which lasts for an hour as in the case of a pestilence
which unpeoples an empire,--in the case of the gust which makes us
shiver for a moment as in the case of the hurricane in which an Armada
is cast away.
It is, according to Mr Sadler, an instance of presumption unparalleled
in literature, heathen or Christian, to trace an evil to "the laws of
nature, which are those of God," as its source. Is not hydrophobia
an evil? And is it not a law of nature that hydrophobia should be
communicated by the bite of a mad dog? Is not malaria an evil? And is it
not a law of nature that in particular situations the human frame should
be liable to malaria? We know that there is evil in the world. If it is
not to be traced to the laws of nature, how did it come into the world?
Is it supernatural? And, if we suppose it to be supernatural, is not the
difficulty of reconciling it with the divine attributes as great as if
we suppose it to be natural? Or, rather, what do the words natural and
supernatural mean when applied to the operations of the Supreme Mind?
Mr Sadler has attempted, in another part of his work, to meet these
obvious arguments, by a distinction without a difference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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