51 



man is great. Perhaps we shall hear one of these 

 days of experiments being- made by some illustrious 

 Parisian surgeon " in corpore vili." Perhaps we 

 shall be hearing- of a dog- being' shut up in a box with a 

 table spoonful of Ganges' mud and found dead in the 

 morning-. Logic and ing-enuity will prove anything-. 

 Does a question hold out ? Double the ing-enuity. 

 Does it hold out still? Double it again, and the 

 thing- is done. Still as I say I shall not believe it. 

 On the contrary, I believe that God is a benignant 

 not a malignant being-. I know well that the evil 

 and misery there is in the world, from which there is 

 no escape, must not be ignored. A blind optimism 

 is as false and foolish as the opposite mistake. This 

 evil and misery no doubt can never be explained. 

 But it is only a small part of the whole. Still, 

 though it cannot be explained, some partially ex- 

 planatory observations can be made about it. For 

 instance, in the animal world, almost the only natural 

 evil is famine and its consequent diseases. But famine 

 could only be impossible by food being- so plentiful 

 that animals would no long-er have to work for their 

 living-, and the diseases consequent on this state of 

 thing-s would, as thing's are constituted, be so awful 

 and destructive, that animal life would shortly cease 

 to exist upon the g-lobe. So with men, if they were 

 not kept in some degree of order by plagues and dis- 

 eases following* vice, dirt and indolence, the race 

 would soon become extinct. 



Again, with regard to the miseries caused by wars 



