8o THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



to influence our judgment, and we permit ourselves to 

 criticise our great mother as we criticise one another; 

 then our verdict, at least so far as sentient nature is 

 concerned, can hardly be so favourable. 



In sober truth, to those who have made a study of 

 the phenomena of life as they are exhibited by the higher 

 forms of the animal world, the optimistic dogma, that 

 this is the best of all possible worlds, will seem little 

 better than a libel upon possibility. It is really only 

 another instance to be added to the many extant, of the 

 audacity of a priori speculators who, having created God 

 in their own image, find no difficulty in assuming that the 

 Almighty must have been actuated by the same motives 

 as themselves. They are quite sure that, had any other 

 course been practicable, He would no more have made 

 infinite suffering a necessary ingredient of His handi- 

 work than a respectable philosopher would have done 

 the like. 



But even the modified optimism of the time-honoured 

 thesis of physico- theology, that the sentient world is, 

 on the whole, regulated by principles of benevolence, 

 does but ill stand the test of impartial confrontation with 

 the facts of the case. No doubt it is quite true that 

 sentient nature affords hosts of examples of subtle con- 

 trivances directed towards the production of pleasure or 

 the avoidance of pain; and it may be proper to say 

 that these are evidences of benevolence. But if so, why 

 is it not equally proper to say of the equally numerous 

 arrangements, the no less necessary result of which is the 

 production of pain, that they are evidences of malevo- 

 lence? 



If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human 

 workmanship, we should call skill, is visible in those 

 parts of the organization of a deer to which it owes its 

 ability to escape from beasts of prey, there is at least 



