2/0 Thomas Henry Huxley 



with the unemotional eye of pure intelligence. But 

 "pain, the baleful product of evolution, increases in 

 quantity and in intensity with advancing stages of ani- 

 mal organisation, until it attains its highest level in 

 man," And so it comes about that the cosmic process 

 produces evil, sorrow, and suffering. Consideration of 

 the cosmic process leads up against the mystery of 

 evil. 



Huxley argued that the various philosophies and 

 civilisations of the past had led by different paths to a 

 similar conclusion. The primitive ethical codes of man 

 were not unlike the compacts of a wolf-pack, the under- 

 standing to refrain from mutual attack during the chase 

 of a common prey. Conceptions of this kind became 

 arranged in codes and invested with supernatural sanc- 

 tion. But in Hindustan and Ionia alike, material pro- 

 sperity, no doubt partly the result of the accepted codes, 

 produced culture of the intellect and culture of the 

 pleasures. With these came the " beneficent demon, 

 doubt, whose name is legion and who dwells amongst 

 the tombs of old faiths." The doubting intellect, act- 

 ing on the codes, produced the conception of justice-in- 

 itself, of merit as divorced from the effect of action on 

 others, the abstract idea of goodness. 



The old philosopher, turning from this new concep- 

 tion to the Cosmos, found that incompatible with good- 

 ness. Suffering and sorrow, sunshine and rain, were 

 distributed independently of merit. With Greek and 

 Semite and Indian the conscience of man revolted 

 against the moral indifference of nature. Instead of 

 bringing in a verdict of guilty, they attempted reconcil- 

 iation in various ways. Indian speculation invented or 

 elaborated the theory of transmigration, in which the 

 Karma or soul-character passed from individual to 



