PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREATION

Summary

We have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation to supra-mundane things.

That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience. Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions—a mind at ease with itself and all around it—is in like manner extremely agreeable. This negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensively experienced by the lower animals than by man, at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily functions are much less liable to derangement than ours. To find the world constituted on this principle is only what in reason we should expect. We cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been created for a contrary purpose.