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- In all our feeble attempts, however, to ‘find out the Almighty to
perfection’, it seems absolutely necessary that we should reason from
nature up to nature’s God and not presume to reason from God to nature. The moment we allow ourselves to ask why some things are not otherwise, instead of endeavouring to account for them as they are, we
shall never know where to stop, we shall be led into the grossest and
most childish absurdities, all progress in the knowledge of the ways of
Providence must necessarily be at an end, and the study w
ill even cease
to be an improving exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so
vast and incomprehensible an idea that the mind of man must
necessarily be bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the crude
and puerile conceptions which we sometimes form of this attribute of
the Deity, we might imagine that God could call into being myriads and
myriads of existences, all free from pain and imperfection, all eminent
in goodness and wisdom, all capable of the highest enjoyments, and
unnumbered as the points throughout infinite space. But when from
these vain and extravagant dreams of fancy, we turn our eyes to the
book of nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we see a
constant succession of sentient beings, rising apparently from so many
specks of matter, going through a long and sometimes painful process
in this world, but many of them attaining, ere the termination of it, such
high qualities and powers as seem to indicate their fitness for some
superior state. Ought we not then to correct our crude and puerile ideas
of infinite Power from the contemplation of what we actually see
existing? Can we judge of the Creator but from his creation?
user-inactivated · 3639 days ago · link ·
Malthus believed in the Christian god, and was in some ways the opposite of a transhumanist -- but not entirely. He is remembered falsely by history. Next time you encounter someone with an opinion of Malthus, make sure they've actually read his essay. This is a gorgeous little passage, only slightly relevant to the main idea, but unexpectedly moving.
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