APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 125 



another ; then our verdict, at least so far as 

 sentient nature is concerned, can hardly be so 

 favourable. 



In sober truth, to those who have made a study of 

 the phenomena of life as they are exhibited by the 

 higher forms of the animal world, the optimistic 

 dogma, that this is the best of all possible worlds, 

 will seem little better than a libel upon possibility. 

 It is really only another instance to be added to the 

 many extant, of the audacity of a priori speculators 

 who, having created God in their own image, find 

 no difficulty in assuming that the Almighty must 

 have been actuated by the same motives as them- 

 selves. They are quite sure that, had any other 

 course been practicable. He would no more have 

 made infinite suffering a necessary ingredient of His 

 handiwork than a respectable philosopher would have 

 done the like. 



But even the modified optimism of the time- 

 honoured thesis of physico-theology, that the sentient 

 world is, on the whole, regulated by principles of 

 benevolence, does but ill stand the test of impartial 

 confrontation with the facts of the case. No doubt 

 it is quite true that sentient nature affords hosts of 

 examples of subtle contrivances directed towards the 

 production of pleasure or the avoidance of pain ; and 

 it may be proper to say that these are evidences of 

 benevolence. But if so, why is it not equally proper 

 to say of the equally numerous arrangements, the no 

 less necessary result of which is the production of 

 pain, that they are evidences of malevolence ? 



If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human 

 workmanship, we should call skill, is visible in those 

 parts of the organization of a deer to which it owes 

 its ability to escape from beasts of prey, there is at 

 least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism 

 of the wolf which enables him to track, and sooner 

 or later to bring down, the deer. Viewed under the 

 dry light of science, deer and wolf are alike admir- 

 able ; and, if both were non-sentient automata, there 



