IGNORANCE AND SUFFERING 143 



possible to supply it whenever and wherever it is needed. 

 That is an example, briefly told, of the experimental 

 questioning of Nature such as is pursued in the 

 laboratories of medical men and physiologists. They 

 do not perform haphazard experiments ; but each 

 experiment is so arranged as to give a definite answer 

 to a definite question, leading to a large result. By no 

 other process can knowledge of many things, which it is 

 urgent for us to have, be obtained. We should have to 

 wait centuries if we merely watched Nature, and hoped 

 for some accidental circumstance to reveal the facts. 



What, after all, do we understand and mean by 

 " pain " ? It is not merely the sharp sting, and 

 consequent shrinking caused by wounds and violence. 

 That, we know well enough, is a beneficent arrange- 

 ment by which men as well as animals are prevented 

 from knocking themselves to pieces, and are driven into 

 avoiding danger to life and limb. But "pain v 

 includes, besides this, the anguish arising from the weary, 

 fruitless struggle against disease and starvation, from 

 the disaster to the household caused by the untimely 

 death of its mainstay, from the slaughter of children by 

 poisonous foods, and from the neglect of the laws of 

 health of body and mind. 



Ignorance, the "curse of Hell," is the cause of all 

 suffering. Knowledge is the wing which takes us 

 heavenward, and frees us from misery. I cannot put it 

 better than in Shakespeare's words. It is man's destiny 

 to diminish pain on this earth, and that not by timidly 

 shrinking from and emotionally raving about the 

 horrors of pain, but by facing them and deliberately 

 accepting the responsibility of producing a small and 

 brief suffering to a few animals as the price of the 

 salvation of his fellow-creatures from the far greater 

 pain which is the assured and fatal companion of 

 ignorance accursed ignorance ! 



A recent writer has told us that he cannot believe 



