254 THE REV. THEODORE WOOD, F.E.S., ON 
unmerited, in the broadest sense of the term ; that it cannot, 
as in the case of man, be in any way regarded as the just 
retribution for personal or ancestral wrong-doing, or for any 
disregard of the laws of health or life; that a wise Creator 
could have avoided it, and a merciful Creator would have 
prevented it ; and that, in the face of its existence, to attri- 
bute Creation to an essentially wise and beneficent God 
implies a contradiction so great, that the doctrine in question 
must perforce be given up by every thoughtful and observant 
mind. 
Now it would, of course, be vain and useless to deny the 
existence of the main facts upon which this contention is 
based. To those who are even in a slight degree familiar 
with the economy of the animal kingdom, it would be almost 
a platitude to assert that there is an amount of apparent 
suffering in nature which no human mind can estimate or 
realize :— 
“The mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow is speared by the 
shrike 
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.” 
So writes the Laureate; and he might with equal truth 
have said the same of the world at large. For, as far as 
animals are concerned, it is one huge, perpetual battle-field ; 
one wide, vast, endless scene of almost universal carnage and 
blood. Might alone is right, and might alone prevails. 
Thousands are ever dying that one may live, and the battle 
is always to the strong. And certainly death, in many forms 
in which it is commonly inflicted, seems terrible and painful 
enough to substantiate the charge of cruelty against 
Nature. 
There is no group of animais even without its creatures of 
prey. The cats and the dogs among mammals; the hawks 
and owls among birds; the alligators, crocodiles, and serpents 
among reptiles; the sharks and thepike among fish; the cuttles 
and the boring whelks among molluscs; the Carabide and 
Ichneumonide among: insects; the crabs and lobsters among 
crustaceans; the sea-anemones among the zoophytes: all 
these are but a few examples of the ever-recurrent Destruc- 
tive Idea, which appearsand re-appears at frequent intervals 
throughout the animal kingdom. And with thisit is asserted 
that cruelty, excessive in amount, although perhaps varying 
in degree, is inseparably bound up. And how, we are asked, 
can a God, supposed to be essentially wise and beneficent in 
