CHAPTEK XIX 



IS NATURE CRUEL ? THE PURPOSE AND LIMITATIONS OF PAIN 



A VERY large number of persons of many shades of opinion 

 and various degrees of knowledge are disturbed by the con- 

 templation of the vast destruction of life ever going on in the 

 world. This disturbance has become greater, has become a 

 mystery, almost a nightmare of horror, since organic evolution 

 through the survival of the fittest has been accepted as a law 

 of nature. The working out of the details of the Darwinian 

 theory has forced public attention to this destruction, to its 

 universality, to its vast amount, to its being the essential means 

 of progress, to its very necessity as affording the materials for 

 that constant adaptation to changes in the environment which 

 has been essential for the development of the whole organic 

 world. 



The knowledge of this startling fact has come to us at a 

 time W'hen there is a great deal of humanity in the world, when 

 to vast numbers of persons every kind of cruelty is abhorrent, 

 bloodshed of every kind is repugnant, and deliberate killing 

 of a fellow-man the greatest of all crimes. The idea, there- 

 fore, that the whole system of nature from the remotest eons 

 of the past — from the very first appearance of life upon the 

 earth — has been founded upon destruction of life, on the daily 

 and hourly slaughter of myriads of innocent and often beau- 

 tiful living things, in order to support the lives of other crea- 

 tures, which others are specially adapted to destroy them, and 

 are endowed w^ith all kinds of w^eapons in order that they may 

 the more certainly capture and devour their victims, — all this 

 is so utterly abhorrent to us that w-e cannot reconcile it with 

 an author of the universe who is at once all-wise, all-powerful, 

 and all-good. The consideration of these facts has been a mys- 



398 



