NATURE AND THE PROBLEM OF 

 SUFFERING. 



"Thou see'st, we are not all alone unhappy; 

 This wide and universal theater 

 Presents more woeful pageants than the scene 

 Wherein we play in." 



-As You Like It. 



N assuming that pain is an evidence of evil 

 which, while in a less degree it is forced 

 to serve as a good, yet in its more terrible 

 aspects attains at times to the deeps of 

 unrelenting tragedy, I am taking a view 

 which is not uncommon nor irrational, and 

 which will, I think, be acknowledged as a 

 fact in life by every one. What shall we 

 say of King Lear, if tragedy be not a re- 

 ality, but only a disguise, a mask? I be- 

 lieve that evil is evil, that it mars life, till it 

 is not as it should be or was meant to be, that it is not 

 a good, and can not be. Nor does evil come merely 

 from the fact of our being finite beings. Adam and 

 Eve were created finite, and yet were supremely happy 

 in the Garden. We all know the old story of the 

 clown at the games, who, when a pigeon was pierced 

 and fell, said, "Ah, you might have spared the arrow ! 

 The fall would have killed him." So, to say that pain 

 serves ultimately to bring about good is but a relative, 

 a partial view; we might have had the good without 



333 



A PLUNDERED NEST 



