6o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but we did need a Darwin to sliow us that, out of all the evil which we 

 see, at least so much of good as we have known has come ; that if this 

 is a world of pain and sorrow, hunger, strife, and death, at least the 

 suffering has not been altogether profitless ; that whatever may be 

 " the far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves," the 

 whole creation, in all its pain and in all its travail, is certainly moving, 

 and this in a direction which makes, if not for " righteousness," at all 

 events for improvement. No doubt the origin of evil has proved a 

 more difficult problem to solve than the origin of species ; but, thus 

 viewed, I think that the Darwinian doctrine deserves to be regarded 

 as in some measure a mitigation of the difficulty — certainly in no case 

 an aggravation of it. I do not deny that an immense residuum of 

 difficulty remains, seeing that, so far as we can judge, the means em- 

 ployed certainly do not appear to be justified by the ends attained. 

 But even here we ought not to lose sight of the possibility that, if we 

 could see deeper into the mystery of things, we might find some fur- 

 ther justification of the evil, as unsuspected as was that which, as it 

 seems to me, Darwin has brought to light. It is not in itself impos- 

 sible — perhaps it is not even improbable — that the higher instincts of 

 man may be pointing with as true an aim as those lower instincts of 

 the brutes which we have been contemplating. And, even if the 

 theory of evolution were ever to succeed in furnishing as satisfactory 

 an explanation of the natural development of the foimer as it has of 

 the natural development of the latter, I think that the truest exponent 

 of the meaning — as distinguished from the causation — of these higher 

 instincts would still be, not'the man of science, but the poet. Here, 

 therefore, it seems to me, that men of science ought to leave the ques- 

 tion of pain in Nature to be answered, so far as it can be answered, by 

 the general voice of that humanity which we all share, and which is 

 able to acknowledge that at least its own allotment of suffering is not 

 an unmitigated evil. 



" For clouds of sorrow deepness lend, 

 To change joy's early rays, 

 And manhood's eyes alone can send 

 A grief -ennobled gaze ; 



" While to that gaze alone expand 

 Those skies of fullest thought, 

 Beneath whose starlit vaults we stand. 

 Lone, wondering, and untaught." 



" "We look before and after, 

 And pine for what is not. 

 Our sincerest laughter 

 With some pain is fraught." 

 Yet still— 



" Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 



