In the next place, let us see what is the sum total of the physical and moral evil in the animal kingdom, which, in reference to the sum total of happiness, is supposed to create this formidable impeachment of the Almighty benevolence on the one hand, or of the Almighty power on the other. As to the order of things which permits the superior animals to prey upon the inferior, there is an explanation which lies on the surface of the facts, and which would seem to satisfy all the requirements of philosophic reasoning, whatever may be the mode in which this part of the moral problem is dealt with by theologians. We find the fact to be that, as we rise higher and higher in the scale of organized beings, the superior are capable of happiness in a greater degree than the inferior, in some proportion to the superiority of their organization. The comparative duration of life among the different animals also enters into the estimate of the sum total of happiness. As a general rule, the inferior organizations are individually more short-lived than the superior. Now, it might have pleased the Creator to cause all animals to be fed by manna from heaven, or to find their sustenance only in vegetable products; and he could thus have dispensed with the carnivorous appetite, and have rendered it unnecessary for the superior to prey upon and destroy the inferior. But, although he could thus have made a world from which the misery of this perpetual carnage would have been absent, and which would have been so far a world of perfect happiness, the fact is that this law of universal destruction is so shaped as to follow the increasing capacity for happiness and enjoyment which moves through the ascending scale of the organized beings. It also follows another obvious purpose of the carnivorous appetite and of the permission to indulge it. A large part of the whole animal kingdom is so constructed that sustentation requires animal food. The blood, the tissues, the whole substance of some animal structures require to be renewed by similar substances; and although life may sometimes be continued by the assimilation of vegetable substances alone, it is not the life for which the animal was formed, because it is not always the life which makes the full end of its being, and realizes its best capacity for enjoyment and for the continuation of its species. In some cases, the carnivorous appetite is withheld. The animal lives and thrives best upon a vegetable diet, and so far as the flesh of these animals enters into the wholesome and beneficial food of man, the animal fulfills one purpose of its existence. Some animals, before they become fit food for man, have been nourished by the substance of still other animals. In all this variety of modes in which animal food is prepared for man, and in the whole of the stupendous economy by which the superior organizations prey upon the inferior in order that each species may