XII.] THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 299 



can we undertake to affirm, amid all the possibilities of 

 things of which we confessedly know so little, that a 

 thousand ends and purposes may not be answered, because 

 we can trace none, or even imagine none, which seem to 

 our short-sighted faculties to be answered in these par- 

 ticular arrangements ? " 



The objection to the bull-dog's ferocity in connexion 

 with " man's brutal sport " opens up the familiar but vast 

 question of the existence of evil, a problem the discussion 

 of which would be out of place here. Considering, how- 

 ever, the very great stress which is laid in the present day 

 on the subject of animal suffering by so many amiable and 

 excellent persons, one or two remarks on that matter may 

 not be superfluous. To those who accept the belief in God, 

 the soul and moral responsibility, and recognize the full 

 results of that acceptance to such, physical suffering and 

 moral evil are simply incommensurable. To them the 

 placing of non-moral beings in the same scale with moral 

 agents will be utterly unendurable. But even considering 

 physical pain only, all must admit that this depends 

 greatly on the mental condition of the sufferer. Only 

 during consciousness does it exist, and only in the most 

 highly-organized men does it reach its acme. The author 

 has been assured that lower races of men appear less keenly 

 sensitive to physical pain than do more cultivated and 

 refined human beings. Thus only in man can there really 

 be any intense degree of suffering, because only in him is 



quod aliquid ex una parte videtur exire ab ordine divinse providentite, quo 

 consideratur secundam aliquam particularem causana, necesse est quod in 

 eundeni ordinem relabatur secundum aliam causam." Sum. Theol. p. i. 

 q. 19, a. 6, and q. 103, a. 7. 



1 "Unity of Worlds," Essay ii., ii. p. 260. 



