488 THE DIMINUTION OF SUFFERING. 



all-important, though simple, process have been equivalent 

 to an immense improvement of our mental faculties, and day 

 by day as books become cheaper, schools are established, and 

 education is improved, a greater and greater effect will be 

 produced. 



The well-known proverb against looking a gift horse in 

 the mouth does not apply to the gifts of nature ; they will 

 bear the closest inspection, and the more we examine, the 

 more we shall find to admire. Nor are these new sources of 

 happiness accompanied by any new liability to suffering ; on 

 the contrary, while our pleasures are increased, our pains are 

 lessened ; in a thousand ways we can avoid or diminish evils 

 which to our ancestors were great and inevitable. How 

 much misery, for instance, has been spared to the human 

 race by the single discovery of chloroform ? The capacity 

 for pain, so far as it can serve as a warning, remains in full 

 force, but the necessity for endurance has been greatly 

 diminished. With increased knowledge of, and attention 

 to, the laws of health, disease will become less and less fre- 

 quent. Those tendencies thereto which we have derived 

 from our ancestors, will gradually die out; and if fresh 

 seeds are not sown, our race may one day realise the 

 advantages of health. 



Thus, then, with the increasing influence of science, we 

 may confidently look to a great improvement in the condition 

 of man. But it may be said that our present sufferings and 

 sorrows arise principally from sin, and that any moral im- 

 provement must be due to religion, not to science. This 

 separation of the two mighty agents of improvement is the 

 great misfortune of humanity, and has done more than any- 

 thing else to retard the progress of civilisation. But even if 

 for the moment we admit that science will not render us 

 more virtuous, it must certainly make us more innocent. 

 Out of 129,000 persons committed to prison in England and 



