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cannot be controlled. And it may be that, though God be both omnipotent and benevolent, evil cannot be separated from the existence of man, because the perfection of the first intelligence insists on the imperfection of all others. And if the existence of man be better than no existence at all, God's benevolence shall suffer no reproach in man's creation, provided that we shall find this existence mitigated and compensated in every possible manner within the pale of this necessary inferiority and subservience.

We must observe here that the perfection of God insists on the imperfection of all other beings, not in any such sense that we should now say that he causes man to violate the laws which surround him; but we here say that man as an intelligent and active being must in his very nature exist in violation of the mode of perfect being, or the throne of God must slide into utter confusion: not so much that he must do wrong, but in his nature he must be wrong, or imperfect as an intelligence, beside the perfect standard, God. Doubtless we may find ample reasons for belief that a being, imperfect in itself, should necessarily show imperfection in its acts: but calling this mere probability, the first proposition is a certainty in itself. Man must have imperfect intelligence or he must have perfect power;—and as men are many, and God the controller must be one, there is no alternative but to submit to the imperfection of the many;—for to place one perfect man at the head of the universe could be no improvement, and no release from finitude of all the rest.

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