“The finger of God is, indeed, visible in every blade of grass that we see,” and among the “animating touches of the Divinity” is the salutary character of evil. “Evil exists in the world not to create despair but activity.” (If it failed to spur industry, then, Malthus wrote in the 1826 edition, “we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality”—i.e., the death of the poor.)
