Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/252

228 cause is not infallibly followed by its effect, it is no cause. It would not be more absurd for a cloud to say to the wind : "I do not wish to be driven by you." This truth can never injure morality. Vice is always vice, as disease is always disease. It will always be necessary to repress the wicked; if they are determined to evil, we must reply that they are equally predestined to chastisement.

Let us make these truths clearer.

What an admirable spectacle is that of the eternal destinies of all beings chained to the throne of the maker of all worlds! I imagine a time when it is not so, but a chimerical liberty makes every event uncertain. I imagine that one of the substances intermediate between us and the great being (there may be millions of such beings) comes to consult the eternal being on the destiny of some of the enormous globes that stand at such vast distances from us. The sovereign of nature would be forced to reply: "I am not sovereign, I am not the great necessary being; every little embryo is a master of destiny. The whole world is free to will without any other cause than the will. The future is uncertain; everything depends on caprice. I can foresee nothing. This great whole, which you regarded as so regular, is but a vast anarchy in which all is done without cause or reason. I shall be very