PHYSICAL EVILS AND "INIDEALITY" 333 



I will now add some remarks and begin by criticising 

 the critic. Mr. Cohen says that if such a slaughter were 

 cruel in a man, it must be so in God. 



But he overlooks the fact that ten times greater 

 slaughter by man has never been regarded as cruel, but 

 the right thing to do ! 



If there is any one thing that man has gloried in from 

 the remotest times to the present day, and from the 

 lowest savage to the highly civilised Englishman, it is 

 War. 



Is not there, therefore, a ring of disingenuousness 

 about the whole argument ? Men cry aloud against the 

 holocausts on those West Indian islands ; but as long as 

 men persist in inventing the most horrible engines of 

 warfare and try to sink or set on fire ships, laden with 

 hundreds of human beings, do their best to mutilate 

 their fellow-creatures with cordite, lyddite, and I do not 

 know how many more inventions, surely it is scarcely 

 apposite to complain of catastrophes as executed by 

 God, when they do their very utmost to surpass Him in 

 destruction ! 



But what is the true situation ? Death is a law of 

 Nature. No one complains of that. At eighty years of 

 age, all of us will be pretty ready to go, being tired of 

 this world, finding ourselves isolated — nay, we shall pro- 

 bably /on^ to go ! 



The Rationalist's complaints, therefore, seem to rest 

 on two grounds. One is that the young and middle- 

 aged do not wish to go yet. The other is that no one 

 likes to feel bodily pain, nor, I will add, give a cause of 

 grief to others. 



If any be Atheists, they can quit the world painlessly 

 at any time. It is curious how pessimistic they are. 

 Haeckel writes a long passage, and the author of Mr. 



