ts?"[264]

The objection to the bull-dog's ferocity in connexion with "man's brutal
sport" opens up the familiar but vast question of the existence of evil, a
problem the discussion of which would be out of place here. Considering,
however, the very great stress which is laid in the present day on the
subject of animal suffering by so many amiable and excellent people, one or
two remarks on that matter may not be superfluous. To those who accept the
belief in God, the soul and moral responsibility; and recognize the full
results of that acceptance--to such, physical suffering and moral evil are
simply incommensurable. To them the placing of non-moral beings in the same
scale with moral agents will be utterly unendurable. But even considering
physical pain only, all must admit that this depends greatly on the mental
condition of the sufferer. Only during consciousness does it exist, and
only in the most highly-organized men does it reach its acme. The Author
has been assured that lower races of men appear less keenly sensitive to
physical pain than do more cultivated and refined human beings. Thus only
in man can there really be any intense degree of suffering, because only in
him is there that intellectual recollection of past moments and that
anticipation of future ones, which constitute in great part the bitterness
of suffering.[265] The momentary pang, the present pain, which beasts
endure, though real enough, is yet, doubtless, not to be compared as {261}
to its intensity with the suffering which is produced in man through his
high prerogative of self-consciousness.[266]

As to the "beneficial lines" (of Dr. Asa Gray, before referred to), some of
the facts noticed in the preceding chapters seem to point very decidedly in
that direction, but all must admit that the actual existing outcome is far
more "beneficial" than the reverse. The natural universe has resulted in
the development of an unmistakable harmony and beauty, and in a decided
preponderance of good and of happiness over their opposites.

Even if "laws of nature" did appear, on the theistic hypothesis, to be
"superfluous" (which it is by no means intended here to admit), it would be
nothing less than puerile to prefer rejecting the hypothesis to conceiving
that the appearance of superfluity was probably due to human ignorance; and
this especially might be expected from naturalists to whom the
interdependence of nature and the harmony and utility of obscure