Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/375

, would seem to represent the world, in the light in which it has been frequently considered, as a state of trial, and school of virtue, preparatory to a superior state of happiness. But I hope I shall be pardoned, if I attempt to give a view in some degree different of the situation of man on earth, which appears to me, to be more consistent with the various phenomena of nature which we observe around us, and more consonant to our ideas of the power, goodness, and foreknowledge of the Deity.

It cannot be considered as an unimproving exercise of the human mind to endeavour to

If we proceed with a proper distrust of our own understandings, and a just