THE GOOD DEVILS 



I 



THIS is not an essay on the optimism of a moral- 

 ist, but on the optimism of a naturalist. 

 On the whole and in the long run, as I am 

 never tired of asserting, Nature is good. The uni- 

 verse has not miscarried. The celestial laws, as 

 Whitman says, do not need to be worked over and 

 rectified. It is good to be here, and it must be equally 

 good to go hence. With all the terrible things in 

 Nature, and all the cruel and wicked things in his- 

 tory, the world is good; life is good, and the Devil 

 himself plays a good part. 



When Emerson in his Journal says, "It is very 

 odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She 

 is no saint," one wonders just what he means. Does 

 he expect gravity, or fire, or flood, or wind, or tide 

 to have scruples? Should the cat have scruples 

 about dining off the mouse or the bird, or the wolf 

 about making a meal of the lamb? or the plants and 

 trees have scruples about running their roots into 

 one another's preserves, or cutting off one another Y 

 rain or sunshine? If our cowbird had the human 

 conscience, we should expect her to have scruples 

 about laying her egg in the nest of another bird 



73 



