416 Darwin, and after Darwin. 
inference appears to me unavoidable—namcely, that 
if the world of sentient life be due to an Omnipotent 
Designer, the aim or motive of the design must have 
been that of securing a continuous advance of animal 
improvement, without any regard at all to animal suf- 
fering. For I own it does not seem to me compatible 
with a fair and honest exercise of our reason to set the 
sum of animal happiness over against the sum of animal 
misery, and then to allege that, in so far as the former 
tends to balance—or to over-balance—the latter, thus 
far is the moral character of the design as a whole 
vindicated. Even if it could be shown that the sum of 
happiness in thebrute creation considerably preponder- 
ates over that of unhappiness—which is the customary 
argument of theistic apologists, —we should still remain 
without evidence as to this state of matters having 
formed any essential part of the design. On the other 
hand, we should still be in possession of seemingly good 
evidence to the contrary. For it is clearly a condition 
to progress by survival of the fittest, that as soon as 
organisms become sentient selection must be ex- 
ercised with reference to sentiency; and this means 
that, if further progress is to take place, states of 
sentiency mzst become so organized with reference to 
habitual experience of the race, that pleasures and 
pains shall answer respectively to states of agreement 
and disagreement with the sentient creature’s environ- 
ment. Those animals which found pleasure in what 
was deleterious to life would not survive, while those 
which found pleasure in what was beneficial to life 
would survive ; and so eventually, in every species of 
animal, states of sentiency as agreeable or disagreeable 
must approximately correspond with what is good for 
