Here our demands may be
allowed very humble, and therefore the more reasonable. If we
required the endowments of superior penetration and judgement, of
a more delicate taste of beauty, of a nicer sensibility to
benevolence and friendship; we might be told, that we impiously
pretend to break the order of Nature; that we want to exalt
ourselves into a higher rank of being; that the presents which we
require, not being suitable to our state and condition, would
only be pernicious to us. But it is hard; I dare to repeat it, it
is hard, that being placed in a world so full of wants and
necessities, where almost every being and element is either our
foe or refuses its assistance ... we should also have our own
temper to struggle with, and should be deprived of that faculty
which can alone fence against these multiplied evils.
The fourth circumstance, whence arises the misery and ill of
the universe, is the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs
and principles of the great machine of nature. It must be
acknowledged, that there are few parts of the universe, which
seem not to serve some purpose, and whose removal would not
produce a visible defect and disorder in the whole. The parts
hang all together; nor can one be touched without affecting the
rest, in a greater or less degree. But at the same time, it must
be observed, that none of these parts or principles, however
useful, are so accurately adjusted, as to keep precisely within
those bounds in which their utility consists; but they are, all
of them, apt, on every occasion, to run into the one extreme or
the other.
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