62 ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE n 



I will endeavour to answer that question. I take 

 it that all will admit there is definite Government 

 of this universe that its pleasures and pains are 

 not scattered at random, but are distributed in 

 accordance with orderly and fixed laws, and that it 

 is only in accordance with all we know of the rest 

 of the world, that there should be an agreement 

 between one portion of the sensitive creation and 

 another in these matters. 



Surely then it interests us to know the lot of 

 other animal creatures however far below us, they 

 are still the sole created things which share with 

 us the capability of pleasure and the susceptibility 

 to pain. 



I cannot but think that he who finds a certain 

 proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up 

 in the life of the very worms, will bear his own 

 share with more courage and submission ; and will, 

 at any rate, view with suspicion those weakly 

 amiable theories of the Divine government, which 

 would have us believe pain to be an oversight and 

 a mistake, to be corrected by and by. On the 

 other hand, the predominance of happiness among 

 living things their lavish beauty the secret and 

 wonderful harmony which pervades them all, from 

 the highest to the lowest, are equally striking 

 refutations of that modern Manichean doctrine, 

 which exhibits the world as a slave-mill, worked 

 with many tears, for mere utilitarian ends. 



There is yet another way in which natural history 



