nd of Nature as a whole, it
scarcely becomes less incompatible with any inference to the morality
of that Cause, seeing that the facts to which I have alluded are not
merely occasional and, as it were, outweighed by contrary facts of a
more general kind, but manifestly constitute the leading feature of the
scheme of organic nature as a whole: or, if this were held to be
questionable, it could only follow that we are not entitled to infer
that there is any such scheme at all.

Nature, as red in tooth and claw with ravin, is thus without question a
large and general fact that must be considered by any theory of
teleology which can be propounded. I do not think that this aspect of
the matter could be conveyed in stronger terms than it is by
'Physicus[26],' whom I shall therefore quote:--

'Supposing the Deity to be, what Professor Flint maintains that he
is--viz. omnipotent, and there can be no inference more transparent than
that such wholesale suffering, for whatever ends designed, exhibits an
incalculably greater deficiency of beneficence in the divine character
than that which we know in any, the very worst, of human characters. For
let us pause for one moment to think of what suffering in Nature means.
Some hundreds of millions of years ago some millions of millions of
animals must be supposed to have become sentient. Since that time till
the present, there must have been millions and millions of generations
of millions and millions of individuals. And throughout all this period
of incalculable duration, this inconceivable host of sentient organisms
have been in a state of unceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain. Looking to
the outcome, we find that more than one half of the species which have
survived the ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and
insentient forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find
teeth and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for
torment--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing
blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence
that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture! Is it said that there are
compensating enjoyments? I care not to strike the balance; the
enjoyments I plainly perceive to be as physically necessary as the
pains, and this whether or not evolution is due to design.... Am I told
that I am not competent to judge the purposes of the Almighty? I answer
that if there are _purposes_, I _am_ able