THE ANIMATED CREATION. 2~9 



action rather amiable and laudable than otherwise, leads to the 

 loss of life, a pure evil, unmixed with good. It is impossible 

 to imagine such a transaction occurring under the immediate 

 direction of the Deity ; it would be profaning human nature 

 to attribute any such act to the immediate command or inter- 

 ference of a man. But there is no difficulty in understanding 

 how such occasional evils should take place in the course of a 

 chain of causes which only proceed in consequence of a general 

 impulse designed in the main for good. 



Evil, indeed, is one of the strongest proofs that could be 

 desired for the reality of this system. We see it in one of its 

 most familiar forms in the destructive animals. An innocent 

 little bird in the claws of the cruel hawk a poor stag grasped 

 by the ruthless boa a lamb in the fangs of the wolf can we 

 imagine a form of misery greater than is exhibited in these 

 animals ? Yet millions of such creatures perish in this manner 

 annually, and have so done since long before there existed a 

 human heart to pine or break with its more sentimental, but 

 not less real wretchedness. Upon no theory can this be under- 

 stood except upon that of an economy governed by general 

 laws. The carnivorous animals are simply the police and 

 undertakers of the inferior creation, preventing their too great 

 increase, and clearing off all such as grow weakly and die, ere 

 they can become in any degree a burden to themselves or a 

 nuisance to other creatures. For these functions the destruc- 

 tive tribes have been expressly organized, and their organization 

 of course is of divine appointment. Constituted as we are, we 

 cannot suppose a plan involving so much suffering to have been 

 adopted except with a view to that independency, or complete- 

 ness within itself, which is here argued for as the manner in 

 which the Deity's operations on earth are revealed to us. He 

 has endowed the families which enjoy his bounties with an 

 almost indefinite fecundity, that enjoyment may be as widely 

 diffused as possible ; but the limitation of the results of this 

 fecundity within the line necessary according to circumstances, 

 were no right immediate employment for himself. The object 

 is accomplished, in a befitting manner, by his ordaining that 

 certain other animals shall have endowments sure so to act as 

 to bring the rest of animated beings to a proper balance. And 

 the object is accomplished well ; insomuch that we never hear 

 of any but the most partial and transient discrepancy between 

 the volume of inferior animal life and the power appointed for 

 its regulation. Even in this sad chapter of nature, we are 



