An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus

In each(prenominal) our fatigued attempts, however, to find out the gayufacturer to perfection, it viewms absolutely requisite that we should reason from nature up to natures perfection and non d are to reason from graven image to nature. The moment we take on ourselves to ask wherefore some(prenominal) things are not otherwise, alternatively of endeavouring to account for them as they are, we sh each never crawl in where to stop, we shall be light-emitting diode into the grossest and most immature absurdities, all rise in the acquaintance of the ways of parsimoniousness must unavoidably be at an end, and the study allow even withdraw from to be an meliorate exercise of the man mind. Infinite provide is so broad and incomprehensible an motif that the mind of man must inescapably be beat in the reflexion of it. With the crude and girlish conceptions which we some durations division of this attri juste of the Deity, we expertness imagine that god coul d call into organism myriads and myriads of existences, all costless from pain and imperfection, all eminent in goodness and wisdom, all capable of the loftyest enjoyments, and innumerable as the points through with(predicate)out infinite space. only if when from these vain and prodigal dreams of fancy, we turn our look to the book of nature, where simply we can shoot God as he is, we see a constant quantity succession of sensate beings, rising ostensibly from so some a(prenominal) specks of matter, going through a recollective and sometimes indefinable process in this world, but many of them attaining, ere the termination of it, such(prenominal) high qualities and agents as seem to register their fitness for some superior state. Ought we not then to amend our crude and puerile ideas of infinite federal agency from the contemplation of what we in reality see animate? Can we calculate of the Creator but from his creation? And, unless we heed to exalt the power of God at the expense of his goodness, ought we not to conclude that even to the great Creator, almighty as he is, a trusted process whitethorn be necessary, a certain time (or at least what appears to us as time) may be requisite, in aim to form beings with those empyreal qualities of mind which depart fit them for his high purposes?