NEW GLEANINGS IN FIELD AND WOOD 



cal forces on the ground that the wheels and tramp- 

 ing hoofs missed them much oftener than they hit 

 them. They learned instinctively to avoid these 

 destructive forces. Animal life was developed 

 amid these dangers. The physical forces go their 

 way as indifferent to life as is your automobile to 

 the worms and beetles in the road. Pain and suf- 

 fering are nothing to the Eternal; the only thing 

 that concerns It is the survival of the fit, no matter 

 how many fall or are crushed by the way; to It 

 men are as cheap as fleas; and they have slaughtered 

 one another in Europe of late without help or 

 hindrance from the Eternal, as do the tribes of 

 hostile ants. The wars of the microbes and the 

 wars of men are all of a piece in the total scheme 

 of things. The survivors owe their power of sur- 

 vival to the forces that sought their destruction; 

 they are strong by what they have overcome; they 

 graduated in that school. Hence it is that we can 

 say that evil is for us as much as it is against us. 

 Pain and suffering are guardian angels; they teach 

 us what to shun. 



How puzzling and contradictory Nature often is ! 

 How impossible, for instance, to reduce her use of 

 horns to a single rule. In the deer and elk tribe 

 the antlers seem purely secondary sexual charac- 

 teristics. They are dropped as the season wanes; 

 but the antelopes do not drop their horns, and in 

 Africa they are singularly ornamental. But with 



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