understand why a power pervades the system acting inversely as the squares of the distance from the point to which it attracts, rather than a power acting according to any other law; and why it has been the pleasure of the almighty Architect of that universe, that the orbits of the planets should be nearly circular instead of approaching to, or being exactly the same with many other trajectories of a nearly similar form, though of other properties; nay, instead of being curves of a wholly different class and shape. Yet we never doubt that there was a reason for this choice; nay, we fancy it possible that even on earth we may hereafter understand it more clearly than we now do: and never question that in another state of being we may be permitted to enjoy the contemplation of it. Why should we doubt that, at least in that higher state, we may also be enabled to perceive such an arrangement as shall make evil wholly disappear from our present system, by showing that it was necessary and inevitable, even in the works of the Deity; or, which is the same thing, that its existence conduces to such a degree of perfection and happiness upon, the whole, as could not, even by Omnipotence, be attained without it; or, which is the same thing, that the whole creation as it exists, taking both worlds together, is perfect, and incapable of being in any particular changed without being made worse and less perfect? Taking both worlds together--For certainly were our views limited to the present sublunary state, we may well affirm that no solution whatever could even be imagined of the difficulty--if we are never again to live; if those we here loved are forever lost to us; if our faculties can receive no further expansion; if our mental powers are only trained and improved to be extinguished at their acme--then indeed are we reduced to the melancholy and gloomy dilemma of the Epicureans; and evil is confessed to checker, nay, almost to cloud over our whole lot, without the possibility of comprehending why, or of reconciling its existence with the supposition of a providence at once powerful and good. But this inference is also an additional argument for a future state, when we couple it with these other conclusions respecting the economy of the world to which we are led by wholly different routes, when we investigate the phenomena around us and within us.