how to use his free-will, more and more of it is entrusted to him, so that
he can acquire for himself practically unbounded freedom in the direction
of good, but his power to do wrong is strictly restricted. He can progress
as rapidly as he will, but he cannot wreck his life in his ignorance. In
the earlier stages of the savage life of primitive man it is natural that
there should be on the whole more of evil than of good, and if the entire
result of his actions came at once upon a man as yet so little developed,
it might well crush the newly evolved powers which are still so feeble.

Besides this, the effects of his actions are varied in character. While
some of them produce immediate results, others need much more time for
their action, and so it comes to pass that as the man develops he has above
him a hovering cloud of undischarged results, some of them good, some of
them bad. Out of this mass (which we may regard for purposes of analogy
much as though it were a debt owing to the powers of Nature) a certain
amount falls due in each of his successive births; and that amount, so
assigned, may be thought of as the man's destiny for that particular life.

All that it means is that a certain amount of joy and a certain amount of
suffering are due to him, and will unavoidably happen to him; how he will
meet this destiny and what use he will make of it, that is left entirely to
his own option. It is a certain amount of force which has to work itself
out. Nothing can prevent the action of that force, but its action may
always be modified by the application of a new force in another direction,
just as is the case in mechanics. The result of past evil is like any other
debt; it may be paid in one large cheque upon the bank of life--by some one
supreme catastrophe; or it may be paid in a number of smaller notes, in
minor troubles and worries; in some cases it may even be paid in the small
change of a great number of petty annoyances. But one thing is quite
certain--that, in some form or other, paid it will have to be.