202 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE y 



entrancing than such as are afforded by natural 

 beauty, or by the arts, and especially by music ; 

 but they are products of, rather than factors in, 

 evolution, and it is probable that they are known, 

 in any considerable degree, to but a very small 

 proportion of mankind. 



The conclusion of the whole matter seems to 

 be that, if Ormuzd has not had his way in 

 this world, neither has Ahriman. Pessimism is 

 as little consonant with the facts of sentient 

 existence as optimism. If we desire to represent 

 the course of nature in terms of human thought, 

 and assume that it was intended to be that which 

 it is, we must say that its governing principle is 

 intellectual and not moral ; that it is a material- 

 ized logical process, accompanied by pleasures and 

 pains, the incidence of which, in the majority of 

 cases, has not the slightest reference to moral 

 desert. That the rain falls alike upon the just 

 and the unjust, and that those upon whom the 

 Tower of Siloam fell were no worse than their 

 neighbours, seem to be Oriental modes of 

 expressing the same conclusion. 



In the strict sense of the word "nature," it 

 denotes the sum of the phenomenal world, of that 

 which has been, and is, and will be ; and society, 

 like art, is therefore a part of nature. But it is 

 convenient to distinguish those parts of nature in 

 which man plays the part of immediate cause, as 



