84 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



designed for our advantage. The first of these statements 

 is a matter of knowledge ; the second, a matter of belief ; 

 and it is with the second that we are now chiefly concerned. 

 With regard to it, two questions may be asked : first, What 

 is its value as a statement of fact ? the second, What is its 

 practical effect in furthering, or impeding, the ends of 

 knowledge. 



In answer to the first of these questions it is, for the 

 present, enough to say that it assumes that there is no evil 

 in the world, which is absurd, and plainly opposed to ex 

 perience. If all that is meant is that good predominates, 

 that is insufficient ; for the mere existence of evil, whether 

 it be much or little, contradicts the idea of combined benevo 

 lence and omnipotence. Moreover, the assumption that 

 good predominates is one which no man is justified in making. 

 It is not of universal acceptance ; many thinkers of the 

 highest eminence have declared against it ; and if, which 

 is doubtful, there is a slight balance of philosophical authority 

 in its favour, that is a fact which can easily be explained and 

 discounted ; finally, it is contradicted by three out of four 

 of the great religions which preside over the destinies of 

 civilized men ; and that, in what is a matter of belief, is per 

 haps the best kind of evidence. Again, if we confine ourselves 

 to purely biological considerations, and look on the different 

 parts of the organism as factors in the preservation of the 

 whole, it is certainly obvious that, with a very few doubtful 

 exceptions, no one of them can be spared ; but when we 

 come to weigh each one separately in the balance, we shall 

 find it impossible to demonstrate that the advantages of that 

 one in particular exceed the disadvantages ; that the total 

 benefit is greater than the price which is paid for it. The 

 less complex and less highly differentiated an organism is, 

 the fewer are its dangers. Every new differentiation by 

 which it extends its power of dealing with its environment 

 adds at the same time a fresh opening for attack, and, 

 through the principle of integration, constitutes a new peril, 

 as well as a new safeguard to the whole. 



To the second question it would be an easy answer 



