The vast and varied procession of events, which we call Nature, affords
a sublime spectacle and an inexhaustible wealth of attractive problems
to the speculative observer. If we confine our attention to that aspect
which engages the attention of the intellect, nature appears a beautiful
and harmonious whole, the incarnation of a faultless logical process,
from certain premisses in the past to an inevitable conclusion in the
future. But if it be regarded from a less elevated, though more human,
point of view; if our moral sympathies are allowed to influence our
judgment, and we permit ourselves to criticize our great mother as we
criticize 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 handiwork 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 contrivances
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 malevolence?
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 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 compassionate,
and those who helped the wolf in his bloody work base and cruel. Surely,
if we transfer these judgments 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 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, mas-much 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.