In rejoinder to these considerations, the question is put, "Could the world be habitable by men, without the existence amongst them of a belief in a future state, in which rewards and punishments shall be meted out for supposed misdeeds committed in the present?" It is well for us to look the matter in the face boldly, and ask ourselves whether fierce tigers, angry bulls, combative stags, kindred devouring rats, offspring eating alligators, infanticidal birds and pigs have succeeded in extirpating their race? There are herds, without number, of graminivorous animals in Africa, and thousands of carnivorous creatures who could not exist without murdering some of the former; yet the slaughter committed by scores of lions does not annihilate antelopes. In like manner there are many folks who have lived in sundry islands of the Pacific without an idea, so far as we can learn, of an eternity, who sometimes spend their leisure time in fighting with and eating each other, and occasionally unite to kill a shark: each individual lives and dies like any other animal, but the race remains. Even the systematic "hellishness" of persecution indulged in by the followers of Jesus in the middle ages did not extirpate the Jews; and if organized murders, such as were, in days gone by, sanctioned by individuals wielding the sceptre of powerful governments, could not cut off from existence a comparatively feeble race, surely we may conclude that a nation can continue populous even if any individual, in a fit of passion, should rise against his fellow and smite him to the dust. But we need not go to New Zealand, China, and Japan to prove that men can live in a community without an idea of eternity, for we have only to refer to the Jews, the so-called people of God. To them no knowledge of eternal life was given, consequently we infer that Jehovah knew that they would get along in the world very well without it. What Elohim thought was unnecessary, it is not for man to propound as important.