hastily assumed to be mere blots upon Nature. The desert and the
volcano, for instance, have often been regarded in that light. But we
have lately been assured that both are needed for the supply of
atmospheric dust, which is a necessary condition of the rain-fall; so
that they are really essential to life upon the planet. Beyond
question, then, there is very much to be said in mitigation of the
terrible difficulty occasioned by what appear to be the havoc and the
prodigality of Nature.

And yet--when all has been said--a residuum does remain of inexplicable
misery and distress, and there are times when we are all of us
constrained to cry out with Darwin that it is "too much," and to ask
whether there is not some further clue to the mystery. And then it may
well be that there comes to our mind an answer that has been given from
the very first moment at which human beings have thought at all. It is
an answer which has seemed inevitable alike to the simplest and the
wisest.

{63}

Carlyle once told of two Scottish peasants who found themselves for the
first time at Ailsa Crag. They stared in astonishment at the great
sea-precipices. At last one said to the other: "Eh, Jock, Nature's
deevilish!"[14] That was the view taken by the primitive races of the
world, as their worships and incantations bore witness. It is a view
which cannot be lightly dismissed as having nothing at all in its
support. We may minimise the evil that is at work around and within us
as we will, but, when we have done our utmost, we shall be unlike the
vast majority of our race if we are not compelled to admit that there
is that in the world which it is quite impossible to ascribe to the
immediate action of an entirely good and beneficent God.

Is it then to be thought incredible that the order of the world should
have been interfered with, at an early stage in its development, in
such a way that the disarrangement was left to work out its fatal
mischief by means of the very constancy of the great system of laws
which make for a regular development? How this might conceivably have
occurred has been set out by an anonymous writer in a remarkable book
which ought to be better known than it is. {64} It was published some
years ago,[15] and bears the suggestive title of _Evil and Evolution_.
The author maintains that the original motive in all living things was
self-preservation for self-realisation; and that this elementary law
was in it