ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



Is the surgeon cruel when he performs an operation? 

 Do our own carnivorous habits imply cruelty? The 

 slaughter-house is not a pleasant object to contem- 

 plate; the sight of blood disturbs most of us; its 

 sight and smell excite even the unreasoning brutes. 

 But it is the wanton shedding of blood that reacts 

 unfavorably upon ourselves, and makes us indiffer- 

 ent to the suffering which blood so often implies. 

 Life is a wonderful and precious gift, and we do not 

 like to see it wantonly destroyed. 



Professor Jacks speaks of "the hot, foul breath of 

 Nature's cruelty," a sentence mild enough when 

 applied to the Germans, but not justified when ap- 

 plied to universal Nature. We can hardly accuse the 

 laws of matter and force of being cruel when they 

 destroy us; if they were not true to themselves, what 

 permanence would there be to life or to anything 

 else? Fire and flood, the earthquake and the tor- 

 nado, cause pain and death, gravity will crush us as 

 soon as sustain us, but these forces are not cruel, be- 

 cause there is no will to inflict suffering; they are a 

 part of the system of things upon which our life and 

 well-being depend. 



Nature, in the action of her mechanical and 

 chemical forces as they go their way about us, is, as I 

 have so often said, apparently as indifferent to man 

 as to all other forms of life, but, to speak in the 

 same terms of our human experience, something 

 must have been solicitous about man or he would 



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