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The Philosophy of Pain. 
[June, 
IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PAIN. 
By Frank Fernseed. 
VEN in these enlightened days the world is not content 
to ask what is, and how it is, but will persist in raising 
the much more difficult question, why ? High au- 
thorities, leaders in methodology, from time to time rebuke 
us, pointing out that all such inquiries are not merely of 
doubtful solubility'', but scarcely admit even of being scienti- 
fically stated. All this is in vain : mankind will persist in 
assuming the existence of a purpose in natural phenomena 
of the most varied orders, and in striving to trace out what 
that purpose may be. If, however, the subjedt I have ven- 
tured to take up is essentially illegitimate, I must crave the 
pardon of my readers for attempting to do what is done in 
thought even by those who turn away from it openly, as a 
mere waste of time and thought. 
Pain has, next to its frequent companion, moral evil, 
ranked first among the shadows of the world we inhabit, 
until both, and much more, were summed up and compre- 
hended under the modern name of the “ struggle for exist- 
ence. ’’ The question has again and again been raised, by 
saints and sages, as well as by every-day mortals, why a 
world in many respedts so fair should be over-clouded with 
this almost omnipresent evil ; why life can neither begin nor 
end except at the price of suffering ? The answers have 
been various, satisfactory to their propounders, but rarely to 
the looker-on, least of all to the sufferer. 
I remember a thinker, or perhaps dreamer, who maintained 
with great vehemence that pain was the normal and natural 
state of man, but that it only became an evil if we refused 
to accept it as our lot. I will not attempt to reproduce in 
English the somewhat misty arguments by which he strove 
to uphold his dodtrine. Suffice it to say that he was nowise 
less eager to avoid this supposed natural condition than are 
other men, and that he was certainly not averse to any 
physical enjoyment. 
There is a school of neo-stoics who take a view in some 
respedts diametrically opposite. They contend that pain 
exists only in our own imaginations or in the feebleness of 
our will. Had we sufficient self-control pain would not 
merely be no longer an evil, but for us would cease to exist. 
