But it is necessary to proceed a step further, especially with a view to the fundamental position now contended for, the extending to the question of Benevolence the same principles which we apply to that of Intelligence. The evil which exists, or that which we suppose to be evil, not only is of a kind and a magnitude requiring inconceivably less power and less skill than the admitted good of the creation--it also bears a very small proportion in amount; quite as small a proportion as the cases of unknown or undiscoverable design bear to those of acknowledged and proved contrivance. Generally speaking, the preservation and the happiness of sensitive creatures appears to be the great object of creative exertion and conservative providence. The expanding of our faculties, both bodily and mentally, is accompanied with pleasure; the exercise of those powers is almost always attended with gratification; all labor so acts as to make rest peculiarly delicious; much of labor is enjoyment; the gratification of those appetites by which both the individual is preserved and the race is continued, is highly pleasurable to all animals; and it must be observed that instead of being attracted by grateful sensations to do anything requisite for our good or even our existence, we might have been just as certainly urged by the feeling of pain, or the dread of it, which is a kind of suffering in itself. Nature, then, resembles the law-giver who, to make his subjects obey, should prefer holding out rewards for compliance with his commands rather than denounce punishments for disobedience. But nature is yet more kind; she is gratuitously kind; she not only prefers inducement to threat or compulsion, but she adds more gratification than was necessary to make us obey her calls. How well might all creation have existed and been continued, though the air had not been balmy in spring, or the shade and the spring refreshing in summer; had the earth not been enamelled with flowers; and the air scented with perfumes! How needless for the propagation of plants was it that the seed should be enveloped in fruits the most savory to our palate, and if those fruits serve some other purpose, how foreign to that purpose was the formation of our nerves so framed as to be soothed or excited by their flavor! We here perceive design, because we trace adaptation. But we at the same time perceive benevolent design, because we perceive gratuitous and supererogatory enjoyment bestowed. Thus, too, see the care with which animals of all kinds are tended from their birth. The mother’s instinct is not more certainly the means of securing and providing for her young, than her gratification in the act of maternal care is great and is also needless for making her perform that duty. The grove is not made vocal during pairing and incubation, in order to secure the laying or the hatching of eggs; for if it were as still as the grave, or were filled with the most discordant croaking,