mind, and we ourselves are mind. Can we in the same way, by looking at
the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?

The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed
from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and
our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary
difficulties.

You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness
of God, because evil is in the world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A
letter containing this challenge has been addressed to me by one of
you. It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the
work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness
of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin,
pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us.
Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge
it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which
comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in
short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a
culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such
attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an
enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as
far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he
could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary. He failed. The
strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has
ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft
of Voltaire.


Sad reckoners of the woes which men endure,