344 NATURAL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS vni 



or that she and her cubs were justified by the " Law 

 of Nature " in their course of action, will perhaps 

 seem to most a monstrous, if not a wicked, doc- 

 trine. Yet this very doctrine is implicitly incul- 

 cated in one of the most familiar works of an 

 author from whom the youthful mind half a 

 century ago derived its earliest impressions of 

 ethics; and also, unfortunately, of poetry. The 

 young people of that day were taught to repeat : 



' ' Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 



For 'tis their nature to ; 

 Let bears and lions growl and fight, 

 For God hath made them so." 



As poetry, this pious doggerel is undoubtedly 

 nought. But, as moral philosophy, ripe, nay 

 even aged reflection must, I think, satisfy 

 us that it is not only sound, but has the 

 merit of putting the case in a nutshell. For, 

 whatever tigers and tigresses may be and do, it is 

 quite clear, if we adopt the creative hypothesis 

 and believe that God made them, that He " made 

 them so." The acts which we are pleased to 

 denounce as wantonly cruel are, therefore, neces- 

 sary and intentional consequences of the divine 

 creative operation. In fact, if there is evidence of 

 intention anywhere in the fabric of things, the 

 study of the structure of one of the cats, great or 

 small, will prove it to be a machine most admir- 

 ably adapted to slay and tear to pieces other living 



