ems outraged, we may be certain that it
is our ignorance alone that is at work, and that a deeper knowledge of
the net-work of evolution and of the lines of action created by human
free will, sooner or later, will dissipate our error.

For all that, the whole universe appears to be the very incarnation of
injustice. The constellations as they come into manifestation shatter
the heavens with their titanic combats; it is the vampirism of the
greatest among them that creates the suns, thus inaugurating egoism
from the very beginning. Everywhere on earth is heard the cry of pain,
a never-ending struggle; sacrifice is everywhere, whether voluntary or
forced, offered freely or taken unwillingly. The law of the strongest
is the universal tyranny. The vegetable kingdom feeds upon the
mineral, and in its turn forms nourishment for the animal; the giants
of the forests spread ruin in every direction, beneath their
destructive influence the spent, exhausted soil can nourish nothing
but weeds and shrubs of no importance. In the animal kingdom a war to
the death is ever being waged, a terrible destruction in which those
best armed for the fray pitilessly devour the weak and defenceless.
Man piles up every kind and method of destruction, cruelty and
barbarity of every sort; he tears away gold from the bowels of the
earth, mutilates the mighty forests, exhausts the soil by intensive
culture, harasses and tortures animals when unable to utilise their
muscular strength, and, in addition, kills them when their flesh is
eatable; his most careful calculations are the auxiliaries of his
insatiable egoism, and, by might or cunning, he crushes everything
that hinders or inconveniences him. Finally, from time to time, the
Elements mingle their awful voice in this concert of pain and despair,
and we find hurricanes and floods, fires and earthquakes pile up
colossal wreck and ruin in a few hours, on which scenes of destruction
the morrow's calm and glorious sun sheds his impassive beams.

And so, before reaching individual evil and apparent injustice, there
rises up before us at the very outset the threatening spectre of
universal evil and injustice. This problem is so closely bound up with
our subject that we are compelled to spend a short time in considering
it.

WHY DOES PAIN EXIST?

To admit, as do certain ignorant fatalists, that the Universe was
created by the stroke of some magic wand, and that each planet,
kingdom, and being is co