THE APPARENT CRUELTY OF NATURE. 275 
truly pointed out, we cannot suppose that the lowest classes in the 
animal kingdom are capable of suffering pain, but as we ascend 
in the scale of animal life, the capacity for suffering increases. If 
that be so, then evolutionists must admit that the capacity for suf- 
fering is one of the products of evolution, and, therefore, that it 
must be beneficial, because the very principle of evolution is that 
only those varieties that are beneficial are preserved. Therefore I 
think the principle of the evolutionists shows that the capacity for 
suffering pain is not an evil, but, on the contrary, a benefit, aud the 
contention that the suffering of pain is a cruelty falls to the ground, 
for Nature is no more guilty of cruelty than the surgeon who 
inflicts pain for our ultimate good. 
Professor H. LANGHORNE OrcHARD, M.A., B.Sc.—The fact of pain 
is, on Herbert Spencer’s reasoning, a calamity. Every pleasure, he 
says, advances and raises the tide of life, and every pain lowers the 
tide of life. The great aim of life is accorded by him to pleasure. 
Therefore, the fact that as man becomes more civilised he feels pain 
more keenly, is an argument against evolutionism. It cannot be 
denied, I think, that the lower animals suffer pain—very little, pro- 
bably, but still some; the very fact of weariness is, of itself, a form 
of pain. No one, I think, can dispute that the lower animals suffer 
from that form of pain at all events. They suffer from thirst and 
hunger, and those things are forms of pain; but the existence of 
suffering in the universe is a very different thing from the existence 
of cruelty accompanying it. Pain, in fact, has been called the 
sentinel which attracts attention to some injury in the system 
which, but for pain, we should neglect and not attend to. In 
order to establish cruelty, there would have to be proved the in- 
tention to inflict unnecessary pain. Unless such an intention can 
be established, the charge of cruelty against the Author of Nature 
must fail. The mere infliction of suffering is not cruelty. To pull 
a person by the hair of the head would ordinarily be considered a 
cruel operation; but supposing it were to save him from drowning 
we should no longer call it cruel, but even benevolent. Similarly, 
an operation by a surgeon is not cruel but benevolent, and why so ? 
Because it is not done with the intention to cause unnecessary suf- 
fering, but it is done with a remedial object for the ultimate good 
of the person. Asit is impossible to show that the suffering and 
pain that occurs in Nature is not for the ultimate benefit of its 
recipients, the charge of cruelty must fail. 
