it must be a
possibility; but that is only because an impossibility cannot be a
duty. It is not my duty to fly, because I have not wings; and
conversely, no doubt, it would follow that _if_ it were my duty I
must possess the organs required. Thus understood, however, the phrase
loses its sublimity, and yet, it is only because we have so to
understand it, that it has any plausibility. Admitting, however, that
people who differ from me can use grander language, and confessing my
readiness to admit error whenever they can point to a single fact
attainable by the pure reason, I must keep to the humbler path. I speak
of the moral instincts as of others, simply from the point of view of
experience: I cannot myself discover a single truth from the abstract
principle of non-contradiction; and am content to take for granted that
the world exists as we know it to exist, without seeking to deduce its
peculiarities by any high _a priori_ road.

Upon this assumption, the question really resolves itself into a
different one. We can neither explain nor justify the existence of
pain; but, of course, we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, pain
predominates over pleasure; and we can ask whether, as a matter of
fact, the "cosmic processes" tend to promote or discourage virtuous
conduct. Does the theory of the "struggle for existence" throw any new
light upon the general problem? I am quite unable to see, for my own
part, that it really makes any difference: evil exists; and the
question whether evil predominates over good, can only, I should say,
be decided by an appeal to experience. One source of evil is the
conflict of interests. Every beast preys upon others; and man,
according to the old saying, is a wolf to man. All that the Darwinian
or any other theory can do is, to enable us to trace the consequences
of this fact in certain directions; but it neither creates the fact nor
makes it more or less an essential part of the process. It "explains"
certain phenomena, in the sense of showing their connection with
previous phenomena, but does not show why the phenomena should present
themselves at all. If we indulge our minds in purely fanciful
constructions, we may regard the actual system as good or bad, just as
we choose to imagine for its alternative a better or a worse system. If
everybody had been put into a world where there was no pain, or where
each man could get all he wanted without interfering with his
neighbours, we may fan