but the one, act all things and pass everywhere by mere volition:—indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly deem space created—but that SPACE itself—that infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows—blotting them out as non-entities from the perception of the angels.     

 P. You say that “but for the necessity of the rudimental life” there would have been no stars. But why this necessity?     

 V. In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter       generally, there is nothing to impede the action of one simple unique law—the Divine Volition. With the view of producing impediment, the organic life and matter, (complex, substantial, and law-encumbered,) were contrived.     

 P. But again—why need this impediment have been produced?     

 V. The result of law inviolate is perfection—right—negative happiness. The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. Through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of       law is rendered, to a certain extent, practicable. Thus pain, which in the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic.     

 P. But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible?     

 V. All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient analysis will show that pleasure, in all cases, is but the contrast of pain. Positive pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. But it has been shown that, in the inorganic life, pain cannot be thus the necessity for the organic. The pain of the primitive life of Earth, is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven.     

 P. Still, there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible to comprehend—“the truly substantive vastness of infinity.”      

 V. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term “substance” itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many       

 Prev. P 64/233 next