nefit
to himself is of a rather startling nature.

The fundamental fault in all reasoning of this order lies in the
assumption that pain ceases to be pain if it can be shown to bring good
to _some_ one. But that it not so. Pleasure and pain are not
quantitative things, increments of which can be carried on from
generation to generation and a balance struck at the end, much as one
strikes a balance between the profits and losses of a year's trading.
All suffering and all enjoyment are of necessity personal. Suffering is
not increased by extending it over a million instances. There was not
more pain because a larger number happened to be be killed in the
European war than are killed in a borderland skirmish. There were a
larger _number_ of people involved in the one case than in the other,
but that is all. Multiplying the number of cases makes a greater appeal
to a sluggish imagination, but it adds nothing substantial to the fact.
Feeling, whether it be pleasant or painful, is a matter of individual
experience, and that being so it is not the number of people who suffer
through no fault of their own, and, so far as one can see, without any
benefit proportionate to the suffering experienced, but the fact of
there being this suffering at all. That is the point the theist must
face; it is the one point he systematically avoids.

Another form of the same argument meets us in the familiar plea that
bodily pain "sounds the alarm bell of disease in time for its removal."
In some sense it may be admitted that a painful feeling, in certain
circumstances, does act as a warning that persistence will lead to
disaster. But it is not universally true in the sense and in the degree
that is needed to justify the argument, and it is a "warning" out of all
proportion to the danger faced. In the first place, pain cannot be a
warning against disease, it can only be an indication of its presence.
It does not warn us against the dangers of a contemplated course of
conduct, nor can it tell us what conduct has led to the pain
experienced. And in the case of contagious diseases, what amount of
warning is there given? In some case the victim is stricken and is dead
in so short a time as not to know with what it is he has been afflicted,
and certainly without any chance of being warned. What warning is there
in the case of a violent poison? Or what relation is there between pains
felt and dangers run? The most dangerous diseases may have painless