individual learns from
experience is very little and would never serve to lift him from out the
ranks of savagery. What he learns from the experience of the race is
much, and gives the whole distinction between the civilised man and the
savage. It is the discipline of the race, that experience which meets
each of us in the form of traditions, counsels, institutions, etc.,
from which we get the really vital lessons of life. But if that is so
the attempted justification of natural processes on the ground that God
designed them as they are so that man might learn from experience breaks
down. The individual does not so learn, but is presented with the
products of the experience of others, and which he accepts in the vast
majority of cases without even putting it to the test. And, therefore,
the method by which man learns was open from the start. Had there been
some _man_ who could have told us generations ago all that has been
slowly discovered since, we should all have been the better for it, and
we should have learned then exactly as we have learned since. And if God
was really anxious to teach us, what possible objection could there be
to his teaching us in some such way? In other words, how can we justify
the process if the result is possible by any other method?

The standpoint of the theist is that God develops the species in order
to benefit the individual. But the order is that the individual is
sacrificed to benefit the species--so far as any benefit can be traced.
For it must be noted that it is not the individual who has passed
through all the suffering, who has lived through the years of
semi-animal life, or through the years of tyranny, that finally emerges
strengthened and triumphant. It is a different individual altogether.
The greatest benefit is secured by those who come latest, and who have
done the least to secure it. The reward bears no relation to the
personal desert. And at the end what happens? If we are to be guided by
the lessons of science, we must believe that one day the human race
will cease to exist, just as certainly as one day it began to exist.
And what are we to think of the almighty wisdom and goodness which is
responsible for all? An almighty intelligence designs a process to
produce a perfect animal through the sufferings of myriads of other
animals. It takes thousands and thousands of generations to complete the
process, and meantime every year is bringing the whole plan nearer to
exti