Locke, if I recollect, says that the endeavour to avoid pain
rather than the pursuit of pleasure is the great stimulus to
action in life: and that in looking to any particular pleasure,
we shall not be roused into action in order to obtain it, till
the contemplation of it has continued so long as to amount to a
sensation of pain or uneasiness under the absence of it. To avoid
evil and to pursue good seem to be the great duty and business of
man, and this world appears to be peculiarly calculated to afford
opportunity of the most unremitted exertion of this kind, and it
is by this exertion, by these stimulants, that mind is formed. If
Locke's idea be just, and there is great reason to think that it
is, evil seems to be necessary to create exertion, and exertion
seems evidently necessary to create mind.

The necessity of food for the support of life gives rise,
probably, to a greater quantity of exertion than any other want,
bodily or mental. The Supreme Being has ordained that the earth
shall not produce good in great quantities till much preparatory
labour and ingenuity has been exercised upon its surface. There
is no conceivable connection to our comprehensions, between the
seed and the plant or tree that rises from it. The Supreme
Creator might, undoubtedly, raise up plants of all kinds, for the
use of his creatures, without the assistance of those little bits
of matter, which we call seed, or even without the assisting
labour and attention of man. The processes of ploughing and
clearing the ground, of collecting and sowing seeds, are not
surely for the assistance of God in his creation, but are made
previously necessary to the enjoyment of the blessings of life,
in order to rouse man into action, and form his mind to reason.