220 CANON W. SAUMAREZ SMITH, B.D. 
higher and wider good; and that much that is permanently 
good results from the temporary incidence of bodily or mental 
suffering. 
No one, for instance, can doubt that pain often acts as 
discipline, stimulant, and warning. Is there not a whole 
philosophy of pain as an educational agent in the proverb, 
“A burnt child dreads the fire?’? The spur of pain and 
discomfort incites men to make effort for ameliorating their 
condition; and the educational influence of pain upon every 
one of us is in the line of progress to what is better.* ‘It is 
the pain of hunger that we shun in taking food; the pain 
of fatigue that prompts rest; the pain of injury that compels 
us to take care of our bodies.” 
The ‘ duris urgens in rebus egestas”’ often leads upwards, 
while indolent epicureanism produces first stagnation, and 
then decay. The struggle with difficulties (whether physical 
or moral) may be often temporarily painful, and yet be an 
indispensable condition of success; and what is, at first, 
painful effort becomes pleasurable in retrospect ; or, some- 
times, itself grows into a pleasurable exercise of activity. 
Pain is not inherently an evil. A famous preacher has 
asserted that “there is just as much evidence of a design to 
produce pain as to produce pleasure” in the world, and that 
it was ‘‘a grand mistake of the old reasoners in their arguing 
for the goodness of God” to try to prove that there was 
more evidence of design for pleasure. He was probably 
speaking of pain in its effect upon the moral training of 
men ; but even if we only regard the “ physical” aspect of 
the universe, as known to us, is it reasonable, when we think of 
mysterious natural forces of a destructive character like poisons, 
or explosive gases, or when we view with dismay the effect 
of great “natural calamities”? like earthquakes, or hurri- 
canes, or floods—is it reasonable, I say, in face of all that 
the universe presents of design, order, beauty, and vitality, 
to infer that the constitution of nature does not tend to 
general happiness and enjoyment ? is it not rather reasonable 
to infer that what we term natural calamities may be, in 
some cases, reparative and remedial agencies, needed for the 
due balance and right adjustment of the cosmic system? By 
such calamities, too, intellectual and moral progress is en- 
couraged. They give incitement to human effort, and to the 
search after further knowledge in the way of remedying the 
* “Te grand agent de la marche du monde c’est douleur,” says Renan, 
somewhere. 
