at last, by their excess, annihilating these antagonists, and themselves with them. Oppression could never have gained the upper hand in human affairs, unless the cowardice, baseness, and mutual mistrust of men had smoothed the way to it. It will continue to increase, until it extirpate cowardice and slavishness; and despair itself at last reäwaken courage. Then shall the two opposite vices have annihilated each other, and the noblest of all human relations, lasting freedom, come forth from their antagonism.
The actions of free beings have, strictly considered, only results in other free beings; for in them, and for them alone, there is a world; and that in which they all agree, is itself the world. But they have these results only through the Infinite Will,—the medium through which all individual beings influence each other. But the announcement, the publication of this Will to us, is always a call to a particular duty. Thus even what we call evil in the world, the consequence of the abuse of freedom, exists only through Him; and it exists for those who experience it only in so far as, through it, duties are laid upon them. Were it not in the eternal plan of our moral culture, and the culture of our whole race, that precisely these duties should be laid upon us, they would not be so laid upon us; and that through which they are laid upon us—i.e. what we call evil—would not have been produced. In so far, everything that is, is good, and absolutely legitimate. There is but one world possible,—a thoroughly good world. All that happens in this world is subservient to the improvement and culture of man, and, by means of this, to the promotion of the purpose of his earthly existence. It is this
