423 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



be explained? How happens it that animals were so 

 designed as to render this bloodshed necessary? How 

 happens it that in almost every species the number of 

 individuals annually born is such that the majority 

 die by starvation or by violence before arriving at ma- 

 turity? Whoever contends that each kind of animal was 

 specially designed, must assert either that there was a deli- 

 berate intention on the part of the Creator to produce these 

 results, or that there was an inability to prevent them. 

 Which alternative does he prefer? — to cast an imputation on 

 the divine character or to assert a limitation of the divine 

 power ? It is useless for him to plead that the destruction of 

 the less powerful by the more powerful, is a means of pre- 

 venting the miseries of decrepitude and incapacity, and 

 therefore works beneficently. For even were the chief mor- 

 tality among the aged instead of among the young, there 

 would still arise the unanswerable question — why were not 

 animals constructed in such ways as to avoid these evils? 

 why were not their rates of multiplication, their degrees of 

 intelligence, and their propensities, so adjusted that these 

 sufferings might be escaped? And if decline of vigour was 

 a necessary accompaniment of age, why was it not provided 

 that the organic actions should end in sudden death, when- 

 ever they fell below the level required for pleasurable exist- 

 ence? Will any one who contends that organisms were 

 specially designed, assert that they could not have been so 

 designed as to prevent suffering? And if he admits that 

 they could have been made so as to prevent suffering, will 

 he assert that the Creator preferred making them in such 

 ways as to inflict suffering ? 



Even as thus presented the difficulty is sufficiently great; 

 but it appears immensely greater when we examine the facts 

 more closely.. So long as we contemplate only the preying 

 of the superior on the inferior, some good appears to be 

 extracted from the evil — a certain amount of life of a higher 

 order, is supported by sacrificing a great deal of life of a 



