THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE: A PROGRAMME. 733 



we should call skill, is visible in those parts of the organization of a 

 deer to which it owes its ability to escape from beasts of prey, there 

 is at least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of the wolf 

 which enables him to track, and sooner or later to bring down, the 

 deer. Viewed under the dry light of science, deer and wolf are alike 

 admirable ; and, if both were non-sentient automata, there would be 

 nothing to qualify our admiration of the action of the one on the other. 

 But the fact that the deer suffers while the wolf inflicts suffering en- 

 gages our moral sympathies. We should call men like the deer inno- 

 cent and good, men such as the wolf malignant and bad ; we should 

 call those who defended the deer and aided him to escape brave and 

 compassionate, and those who helped the wolf in his bloody work base 

 and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judgments to Nature outside 

 the world of man at all, we must do so impartially. In that case, the 

 goodness of the right hand which helps the deer, and the wickedness 

 of the left hand which eggs on the wolf, will neutralize one another ; 

 and the course of Nature will appear to be neither moral nor immoral, 

 but non-moral. 



This conclusion is thrust upon us by analogous facts in every part 

 of the sentient world ; yet, inasmuch as it not only jars upon prevalent 

 prejudices, but arouses the natural dislike to that which is painful, 

 much ingenuity has been exercised in devising an escape from it. 



From the theological side, we are told that this is a state of proba- 

 tion, and that the seeming injustices and immoralities of Nature will 

 be compensated by and by. But how this compensation is to be ef- 

 fected, in the case of the great majority of sentient things, is not clear. 

 I apprehend that no one is seriously prepared to maintain that the 

 ghosts of all the myriads of generations of herbivorous animals which 

 lived during the millions of years of the earth's duration before the 

 appearance of man, and which have all that time been tormented and 

 devoured by carnivores, are to be compensated by a perennial exist- 

 ence in clover ; while the ghosts of carnivores are to go to some kennel 

 where there is neither a pan of water nor a bone with any meat on it. 

 Besides, from the point of view of morality, the last state of things 

 would be worse than the first. For the carnivores, however brutal and 

 sanguinary, have only done that which, if there is any evidence of con- 

 trivance in the world, they were expressly constructed to do. More- 

 over, carnivores and herbivores alike have been subject to all the mis- 

 eries incidental to old age, disease, and over-multiplication, and both 

 might well put in a claim for " compensation " on this score. 



On the evolutionist side, on the other hand, we are told to take 

 comfort from the reflection that the terrible struggle for existence 

 tends to final good, and that the suffering of the ancestor is paid for 

 by the increased perfection of the progeny. There would be some- 

 thing in this argument if, in Chinese fashion, the present generation 

 could pay its debts to its ancestors ; otherwise, it is not clear what 



