CHAPTER XIX 



IS NATURE CRUEL? THE PURPOSE AND 

 LIMITATIONS OF PAIN 



A VERY large number of persons of many shades of opinion 

 and various degrees of knowledge are disturbed by the 

 contemplation of the vast destruction of life ever going on 

 in the world. This disturbance has become greater, has 

 become a mystery, almost a nightmare of horror, since 

 organic evolution through the survival of the fittest has 

 been accepted as a law of nature. The working out of the 

 details of the Darwinian theory has forced public attention 

 to this destruction, to its universality, to its vast amount, to 

 its being the essential means of progress, to its very necessity 

 as affording the materials for that constant adaptation to 

 changes in the environment which has been essential for the 

 development of the whole organic world. 



The knowledge of this startling fact has come to us at a 

 time when there is a great deal of humanity in the world, 

 when to vast numbers of persons every kind of cruelty is 

 abhorrent, bloodshed of every kind is repugnant, and de- 

 liberate killing of a fellow-man the greatest of all crimes. 

 The idea, therefore, that the whole system of nature from 

 the remotest eons of the past — from the very first appear- 

 ance of life upon the earth — has been founded upon 

 destruction of life, on the daily and hourly slaughter of 

 myriads of innocent and often beautiful living things, in 

 order to support the lives of other creatures, which others 

 are specially adapted to destroy them, and are endowed 

 with all kinds of weapons in order that they may the more 

 certainly capture and devour their victims, — all this is so 

 utterly abhorrent to us that we cannot reconcile it with an 



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