Page:An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).djvu/386

 peculiarly calculated to afford opportunity of the most unremitted exertion of this kind: and it is by this exertion, by these stimulants, that mind is formed. If Locke's idea be just, and there is great reason to think that it is, evil seems to be necessary to create exertion; and exertion seems evidently necessary to create mind.

The necessity of food for the support of life, gives rise, probably, to a greater quantity of exertion, than any other want, bodily or mental. The Supreme Being has ordained, that the earth shall not produce food in great quantities, till much preparatory labour and ingenuity has been exercised upon its surface. There is no conceivable connection to our comprehensions, between the seed, and the plant, or tree, that rises from it. The Supreme Creator might, undoubtedly,