Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/381

 but that it was clogged and impeded in its operations, during the first twenty years of life, by the weakness, or hebetude, of the organs in which it was enclosed. As we shall all be disposed to agree, that God is the creator of mind as well as of body; and as they both seem to be forming and unfolding themselves at the same time; it cannot appear inconsistent either with reason or revelation, if it appear to be consistent with phenomena of nature, to suppose that God is constantly occupied in forming mind out of matter, and that the various impressions that man receives through life, is the process for that purpose. The employment is surely worthy of the highest attributes of the Deity.

This view of the state of man on earth will not seem to be unattended with probability, if, judging from the little