Your complaint
therefore is ignorant and groundless; since, according to the
various energy of creation, and the common laws of nature, there is
a constant provision of that which is best at the same time for you
and for the whole.--For the governing intelligence clearly beholding
all the actions of animated and self-moving creatures, and that
mixture of good and evil which diversifies them, considered first of
all by what disposition of things, and by what situation of each
individual in the general system, vice might be depressed and subdued,
and virtue made secure of victory and happiness with the greatest
facility and in the highest degree possible. In this manner he
ordered through the entire circle of being, the internal
constitution of every mind, where should be its station in the
universal fabric, and through what variety of circumstances it
should proceed in the whole tenor of its existence.' He goes on in
his sublime manner to assert a future state of retribution, 'as well
for those who, by the exercise of good dispositions being harmonised
and assimilated into the divine virtue, are consequently removed to
a place of unblemished sanctity and happiness; as of those who by
the most flagitious arts have risen from contemptible beginnings to
the greatest affluence and power, and whom you therefore look upon
as unanswerable instances of negligence in the gods, because you are
ignorant of the purposes to which they are subservient, and in what
manner they contribute to that supreme intention of good to the whole.
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