H EVOLUTION AND ETHICS 



pain and sorrow; if grief and evil fall, like the rain, 

 upon both the just and the unjust ; it is because, like 

 the rain, they are links in the endless chain of 

 natural causation by which past, present, and future 

 are indissolubly connected; and there is no more 

 injustice in the one case than in the other. Every 

 sentient being is reaping as it has sown ; if not in 

 this life, then in one or other of the infinite series of 

 antecedent existences of which it is the latest term. 

 The present distribution of good and evil is, there- 

 fore, the algebraical sum of accumulated positive 

 and negative deserts ; or, rather, it depends on the 

 floating balance of the account. For it was not 

 thought necessary that a complete settlement should 

 ever take place. Arrears might stand over as a sort 

 of ' hanging gale ' ; a period of celestial happiness 

 just earned might be succeeded by ages of torment in 

 a hideous nether world, the balance still overdue for 

 some remote ancestral error. ( 5 ) 



Whether the cosmic process looks any more moral 

 than at first, after such a vindication may perhaps 

 be questioned. Yet this plea of justification is 

 not less plausible than others; and none but very 

 hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent 

 absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that 

 of transmigration has its roots in the world of 

 reality ; and it may claim such support as the great 

 argument from analogy is capable of supplying. 



Everyday experience familiarizes us with the facts 

 which are grouped under the name of heredity. Every 

 one of us bears upon him obvious marksof his parentage, 



