Secondly, is he not much more honored upon my hypothesis, which maintains that he does everything by the necessity of his own nature, than upon yours, which raises up against him an enemy, disfiguring, polluting, and destroying all his works of wisdom and kindness throughout the world! In the third place, it by no means implies a mean and unworthy idea of God to say that, after forming millions of worlds, in which death and evil may have no residence, it might be necessary that death and evil should reside in this. Fourth, it is not deprecating God to say that He could not form man without bestowing on him self-love; that this self-love could not be his guide without almost always leading him astray; that his passions are necessary, but at the same time noxious; that the continuation of the species cannot be accomplished without desires; that these desires cannot operate without exciting quarrels; and that these quarrels necessarily bring on wars, etc. Fifth, on observing a part of the combinations of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms, and the porous nature of the earth, in every part so minutely pierced and drilled like a sieve, and from which exhalations constantly rise in immense profusion, what philosopher will be bold enough, what schoolman will be weak enough, decidedly to maintain that nature could possibly prevent the ravages of volcanoes, the intemperature of seasons, the rage of tempests, the poison of pestilence, or, in short, any of those scourages which afflict the world? Sixth, a very great degree of power and skill are required to form lions who devour bulls, and to produce men who invent arms which destroy, by a single blow, not merely the life of bulls and lions, but--melancholy as the idea is--the life of one another. Great power is necessary to produce the spiders which spread their exquisitely fine threads and net-work to catch flies; but this power amounts not to omnipotence--it is not boundless power. In the seventh place, if the Supreme Being had been infinitely powerful, no reason can be assigned why He should not have made creatures endowed with sensation infinitely happy; He has not in fact done so; therefore we ought to conclude that He could not do so. Eighth, all the different sects of philosophers have struck on the rock of physical and moral evil. The only conclusion that can be securely reached is, that God, acting always for the best, has done the best that He was able to do. Ninth, this necessity cuts off all difficulties and terminates all disputes. We have not the hardihood to say: "All is good"; we say: "There is no more evil than was absolutely inevitable."