THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 81 



equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of the 

 wolf which enables him to track, and sooner or later 

 to bring down, the deer. Viewed under the dry light of 

 science, deer and wolf are alike admirable; and, if both 

 were non-sentient automata, there would be nothing to 

 qualify our admiration of the action of the one on the 

 other. But the fact that the deer suffers, while the wolf 

 inflicts suffering, engages our moral sympathies. We 

 should call men like the deer innocent and good, men such 

 as the wolf malignant and bad ; we should call those who 

 defended the deer and aided him to escape brave and com- 

 passionate, and those who helped the wolf in his bloody 

 work base and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judg- 

 ments to nature outside the world of man at all, we 

 must do so impartially. In that case, the goodness of the 

 right hand which helps the deer, and the wickedness of 

 the left hand which eggs on the wolf, will neutralize one 

 another: and the course of nature will appear to be 

 neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral. 



This conclusion is thrust upon us by analogous facts 

 in every part of the sentient world; yet, inasmuch as it 

 not only jars upon prevalent prejudices, but arouses the 

 natural dislike to that which is painful, much ingenuity 

 has been exercised in devising an escape from it. 



From the theological side, we are told that this is a 

 state of probation, and that the seeming injustices and 

 immoralities of nature will be compensated by and by. 

 But how this compensation is to be effected, in the case 

 of the great majority of sentient things, is not clear. I 

 apprehend that no one is seriously prepared to maintain 

 that the ghosts of all the myriads of generations of her- 

 bivorous animals which lived during the millions of years 

 of the earth's duration, before the appearance of man, 

 and which have all that time been tormented and de- 

 voured by carnivores, are to be compensated by a peren- 



