354 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



the infliction of it — was to become the lot of wander- 

 ing man. 



But let us recur to the problem ; and, to borrow the 

 words of Mr. Le Gallienne, in his treatise on pain in 

 "The Religion of a Literary Man," it is "the imme- 

 morial problem of the meaning of evil, the mystery of 

 pain, the crux of theology, the darkest mystery of life." 

 We have seen that we are perpetually confronted anew 

 with the pressure of irresistible, overwhelming evil, 

 with all its lowering, baneful, malevolent, pernicious 

 effects, and with sorrow, sadness, woe, distress, agony, 

 grief, misery, inequality, crime, disease — in a word, 

 pain — as the fruit of experience. Pain does not pre- 

 sent itself to the eyes of most men so much as a philo- 

 sophic mystery as it does as an unavoidable fact. "We 

 are confronted by a condition, not a theory." And 

 yet a little as to the theory. Whence all this pain that 

 is so universal? And why? 



Now I do not say that joy is any less a mystery, 

 or any less universal, than pain. I am confining myself 

 in this paper strictly to the question of the relation of 

 Nature to the experience of suffering. The presence 

 of joy is quite another matter. Nature offers, to all 

 living beings, ah alleviation in constant presentations 

 of what Walter Pater calls "the Intricate omnipres- 

 ence of beauty" (which in Itself is Indeed a sign of 

 promise), and In the manifold possibilities of the en- 

 joyment of their natures In the exercise of play, the 

 sense of humor, the pleasures of discovery, and In many 

 ways other than the paths of pain. There are laws 

 other than the law of tooth and claw. But it is rather 

 a utilitarian view of life which would say, "Let us seek 



