In short, nature seems to have formed an
exact calculation of the necessities of her creatures; and, like
a rigid master, has afforded them little more powers or
endowments than what are strictly sufficient to supply those
necessities. An indulgent parent would have bestowed a large
stock, in order to guard against accidents, and secure the
happiness and welfare of the creature in the most unfortunate
concurrence of circumstances. Every course of life would not have
been so surrounded with precipices, that the least departure from
the true path, by mistake or necessity, must involve us in misery
and ruin. Some reserve, some fund, would have been provided to
ensure happiness; nor would the powers and the necessities have
been adjusted with so rigid an economy. The Author of Nature is
inconceivably powerful: his force is supposed great, if not
altogether inexhaustible: nor is there any reason, as far as we
can judge, to make him observe this strict frugality in his
dealings with his creatures. It would have been better, were his
power extremely limited, to have created fewer animals, and to
have endowed these with more faculties for their happiness and
preservation. A builder is never esteemed prudent, who undertakes
a plan beyond what his stock will enable him to finish.
In order to cure most of the ills of human life, I require
not that man should have the wings of the eagle, the swiftness of
the stag, the force of the ox, the arms of the lion, the scales
of the crocodile or rhinoceros; much less do I demand the
sagacity of an angel or cherubim.
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