tra_, by the material conditions under
which He works:--

The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it
susceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of
its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on
the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one
in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable
laws and indestructible properties of matter.[3]

Such a view of the case, as we have already said in our previous
chapter, is purely deistic; but we must now proceed to point out, with
great respect for so great an intellect as Mill's, that the supposition
which, he says, "avails nothing {111} on the theory of an omnipotent
Creator"--_viz._, that susceptibility to pleasure involves
susceptibility to pain--seems to us to fit and cover the facts
precisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not
two different things which could conceivably exist apart from each
other, but are only different manifestations of one and the same
capacity, _viz._, for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever.
We could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while _in_capable of
feeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, while
_in_sensible to musical discords; besides which, monotony of sensation
annihilates sensation. On this point we may invoke against the
pre-evolutionist Mill a modern scientific authority like Professor
Fiske, who expresses himself to the effect that "without the element of
antagonism there could be no consciousness, and therefore no world."
"It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth," he observes, "that
if there were no colour but red, it would be exactly the same thing as
if there were no colour at all. . . If our ears were to be filled with
one monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect
upon consciousness would be absolute silence. If our palates had never
come in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no
more of sweetness than of bitterness. If we had never felt physical
pain, we could not recognise physical pleasure. For {112} want of the
contrasted background, its pleasurableness would cease to exist. . .
We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness
of which cannot be gainsaid. _In a happy world there must be sorrow
and pain._" [4] And this necessity, we would add, does not follow from
God