The first essay is devoted to an examination of the ways of Nature as unmodified by the voluntary agency of man. These the author finds worthy of all abhorrence; and Nature in its purely physical aspect he considers to be full of blemishes, which are patent to the eye of modern science, and which "all but monkish quietists think it a religious duty to amend." A competent master-workman with good materials would not have turned out a world so "bunglingly" made, with great patches of poisonous morass and arid desert unfit for human habitation, with coal and other requisites for man's comfort stored away out of sight, with the rivers all unbridged, and mountains and other impediments thrown in the way of free locomotion. So far, then, from its being man's duty to imitate Nature, as some have thought it was, it is incumbent upon him to oppose her with all his powers, because of her gross injustice in the realm of morals, and to remedy her physical defects as far as lies in his power. On this view of Nature our fathers were wiser in their generation than we when they trimmed their trees into grotesque shapes and laid out their landscapes in geometric lines; when in medicine they substituted the lancet and unlimited mercury for the vis medicatrix naturae; when in philosophy they dictated to Nature from their internal consciousness, before Bacon introduced the heresy of induction; when in politics they had a profound faith in statutes and none at all in statistics; when in education they conscientiously rammed down the ologies at the point of the ferule, in blissful ignorance of psychology. If Mr. Mill finds it necessary to rail at Nature because she did not put coal on the top of the ground and build bridges and dig wells for man's convenience, why not call her a jade at once because she does not grow ready-made clothing of the latest mode in sizes to suit, because the trees do not bear hot rolls and coffee, and because Mr. Mill's philosophy is not an intuition of the mind? He is less restrained in speaking of the moral enormities of Nature. Altogether the most striking passage in the book is his indictment of the Author of Nature, which is truly Satanic in its audacity and hardly to be paralleled in literature for its impiety; for it is impious even from Mr. Mill's standpoint, since he admits that the weight of evidence tends to prove that Nature's Author is both wise and good. We transcribe only some of his expressions: "Nearly all things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are Nature's every-day performances;" she "has a hundred hideous deaths" reserved for her victims, "such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," which "she uses with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and justice;" "she inflicts torture in apparent wantonness;" "everything which the worst men commit against life and property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents;" "Nature has noyades more fatal than those of Carrier: her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias." Such are a few of the impassioned and presumptuous expressions which Mr. Mill allows himself to use in speaking of the great mystery of human suffering, which others touch with reverence, and do not dare to reprobate, since they cannot understand. His words are as false as they are bold. Fierce and terrible as Nature is in some of her aspects, it is not true that her prevailing attitude is, as here indicated, one of bitter hostility to the race she nourishes on her bosom. If she were the monster here described, mankind would long ago have perished under her persistent cruelties, and Mr. Mill's profane cry would never have gone up to Heaven. Men will always regard the world subjectively, and adjudge it happy or the reverse according to their temperament or passing humor; but, if it be conceded—as it is by Mr. Mill through his whole argument—that man is a moral creature, with a true power of self-determination within certain limits, and with sufficient intelligence to discern the laws of Nature, and that therefore all the pain that man brings upon himself by voluntary violation of discovered law is to be deducted from the sum-total of human suffering to arrive at the amount that is attributable to Nature, most men, if they are honest, will on reflection admit that Nature brings to the great body of the human family immeasurably more comfort, if not pleasure, than she does pain. Take the senses, which are the sources of physical pleasure. How seldom, comparatively, the eye is pained, while it rests with habitual gratification upon the sky and landscape, and on the human form divine when unmarred by vice! How rarely the taste is offended or the appetite starved, while every meal, be it ever so simple, yields enjoyment to the palate! The ear is regaled with the perpetual music of wind and ocean and feathered minstrelsy, of childhood's voice and the sweet converse of friends. So, too, Nature is a great laboratory of delicate odors: the salt breath of the sea is like wine to the sense; the summer air is freighted with delights, and every tree and flower exhales fragrance: only where danger lurks does Nature assault the nostrils with kindly warning. If it be objected that vast numbers of the race live in cities where every sense is continually offended, it is to be remembered that "man made the town," and is to be held responsible for the unhappiness there resulting from his violations of natural law. But even in cities Nature is more kind to man than he is to himself, and dulls his faculties against the deformities and discords of his own creating. From the sense of feeling it is probable we receive more pain than pleasure, but by no means so much more as to overbalance the great preponderance of delights coming through the other avenues: a great part of such pain is cautionary, and much can be avoided by voluntary action; and the stimulus thus given by the wise severity of Nature begets that activity of the moral life from which results the highest form of happiness. When we attempt to estimate our mental and moral sufferings, it is impossible even to approximate the proportion of them that are due to our voluntary infringement of law; but, adding together all that spring from natural sources and all that men bring upon themselves, the suffering is still outweighed by the pleasure among the great mass of men.
But, however unfavorable a view we take of the condition of humanity, it is gross exaggeration to say, "There is no evidence whatever in Nature for Divine justice, whatever standard of justice our ethical opinions may lead us to recognize: ... there is no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of Nature." Though many of Nature's dealings with man appear to be unjust, by far the larger proportion of them are graduated according to what seems, even to us, a standard of strict equity. As Matthew Arnold puts it, there is a power in Nature "which makes for righteousness." And every generation verifies the words of the Preacher: "The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth—much more the wicked and the sinner;" "as righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death." It was the reverent saying of that noblest of pagans, Marcus Aurelius, that "if a man should have a feeling and a deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the universe, there is hardly anything that comes in the course of Nature which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give pleasure." When that "deeper insight" comes, and the eyes of man's spiritual understanding are opened, all appearance of injustice in Nature will probably vanish.
If men were indeed as wretched as Mr. Mill describes them to be, and had no fear of judgment and immortality—which Mr. Mill informs us are probably but figments of the brain—why should they continue to endure "the calamity of so long life"?
'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws—
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness, and to cease.
So men would begin to reason if this dark gospel of despair were ever to gain currency; but, fortunately, it is only the morbid dream of a closet philosopher, who fancied the world was upside down because he could not unriddle it with his logical Rule of Three.
This representation of Nature is not only at variance with facts, but inconsistent with Mr. Mill's own conclusions, as he reasons from natural phenomena that the Creator is both wise and beneficent, but that He is in some way hindered from fully accomplishing His kind purposes. But if "there is no evidence whatever for Divine justice, and no shadow of justice in the general arrangements of Nature," the reasonable inference is that its author is a being of infinite malignity who is in some mysterious manner, for the present, prevented from wreaking the full measure of his wrath upon mankind. From this horrible thought Mr. Mill recoils, and, giving logic to the winds, he trusts that