382 THE WORLD OF LIFE chap. 



A Recent Illustration of the Necessity of Pain 



Within the last few years we have had remarkable proofs 

 of the beneficence of pain as a life-saver by the sad results 

 of its absence. The recently discovered X-rays, so much 

 used now for localising internal injuries, and of bullets or 

 other foreign objects in any part of the body, have the pro- 

 perty also of setting up a special internal disorganisation 

 unaccompanied at the time by pain. The result has been 

 loss of limbs or loss of life to some of the earlier investigators, 

 and perhaps some injury even to the patients for whose 

 benefit it has been applied. It seems probable, therefore, 

 that if these rays had been associated in any perceptible 

 degree with the heat and light we receive from the sun, 

 either the course of evolution would have been very different 

 from what it has been, or the development of life have been 

 rendered impossible. Pain has not accompanied the in- 

 cidence of these rays on the body, because living organisms 

 have never hitherto been exposed to their injurious effects. 



Microbes and Parasites : their Purpose in the Life- World 



Much light is thrown on the analogous problem of those 

 human diseases which are supposed to be caused by germs, 

 microbes, or parasites, by the application of the more ex- 

 tended views of evolution I have advocated in the present 

 volume. The medical profession appear to hold the view 

 that pathogenic or disease-producing microbes exist for the 

 purpose of causing disease in otherwise healthy bodies to 

 which they gain access — that they are, in fact, wholly evil. 

 It is also claimed that the only safeguard against them is 

 some kind of " anti- toxin " with which every one must be 

 inoculated to be saved from the danger of attack by some 

 or all of the large number of such diseases which affect 

 almost every organ and function of the body. This view 

 seems to me to be fundamentally wrong, because it does 

 not show us any use for such microbes in the scheme of life, 

 and also because it does not recognise that a condition of 

 health is the one and only protection we require against all 

 kinds of disease ; and that to put any product of disease 



