416 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



inference appears to me unavoidable namely, that 

 if the world of sentient life be due to an Omnipotent 

 Designer, the aim or motive of the design must have 

 been that of securing a continuous advance of animal 

 improvement, without any regard at all to animal suf- 

 fering. For I own it does not seem to me compatible 

 with a fair and honest exercise of our reason to set the 

 sum of animal happiness over against the sum of animal 

 misery, and then to allege that, in so far as the former 

 tends to balance or to over-balance the latter, thus 

 far is the moral character of the design as a whole 

 vindicated. Even if it could be shown that the sum of 

 happiness in the brute creation considerably preponder- 

 ates over that of unhappiness which is the customary 

 argument of theistic apologists, we should still remain 

 without evidence as to this state of matters having 

 formed any essential part of the design. On the other 

 hand, we should still be in possession of seemingly good 

 evidence to the contrary. For it is clearly a condition 

 to progress by survival of the fittest, that as soon as 

 organisms become sentient selection must be ex- 

 ercised with reference to sentiency ; and this means 

 that, if further progress is to take place, states of 

 sentiency must become so organized with reference to 

 habitual experience of the race, that pleasures and 

 pains shall answer respectively to states of agreement 

 and disagreement with the sentient creature's environ- 

 ment. Those animals which found pleasure in what 

 was deleterious to life would not survive, while those 

 which found pleasure in what was beneficial to life 

 would survive ; and so eventually, in every species of 

 animal, states of sentiency as agreeable or disagreeable 

 must approximately correspond with what is good for 



