Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/71

 some, healthy body, and the question of clothes will not give us much trouble.

Not many readers will, I think, deny that when every human being has become perfect, the whole human race or society will be perfect also. But even with such perfection attained, there would probably still exist among mankind a large amount of suffering if the universe remained as it is. For not only man, but also the world in which man lives (or supposes himself to live), is at present very imperfect. I do not inquire into the origin of this mundane imperfection, any more than I inquired into the origin of human evil; I am content to propound a certain cure for both. How natural theologians manage to survey the world and find it all alive with divinity, find everywhere clear marks of a Creator infinite in goodness, wisdom and power, would certainly surprise me, if I were now capable of being surprised by any enormity of human folly or frenzy. For while in order to explain man's evil condition they have the excellent absurdities of Freewill and the Fall, even they do not pretend that the world has freewill, that it sinned and thus grew corrupt; yet surely the world is about as badly off, as far from perfection, as man. Let me note a few of its maladies and defects. This poor earth of ours suffers dreadfully with colics, heartburns, violent vomitings, convulsions, paroxysms; she has burning fire in her belly and heart; and some of us always suffer directly or indirectly from the throes of her suffering. She has but one moon, while Jupiter has four, Uranus six, Saturn seven; and her domains are much smaller than those of the majority of the other planets. She has been roughly crushed in at top and bottom, and these extremities are paralysed with cold; and uncouthly swollen about the middle, where she burns with a fierce inflammation. Her beauty has been thus seriously damaged, and she is moreover blotched with nasty boils and