race? Evidently, then, physical evil even in the case of man is only _seeming_ evil, but _real_ good. 3. _Organic Evil--Disease._--But there is a more dreadful form of evil than that which results from _external_ physical nature--an evil far more subtle and difficult to understand, and therefore to conquer. I mean _internal_ organic evil--disease in its diversified forms and with its attendant weakness and suffering, inscrutable often in its causes, insidious in its approaches, contagious, infectious, spreading from house to house, carrying suffering and death in its course, and leaving sorrow and desolation behind. Is there any remedy which can transmute this evil into good? There is. It is again knowledge--knowledge of the laws, and power over the forces, of _organic nature_. Is it not evident that complete knowledge of the laws of health and the causes of disease would put this evil also under our feet? Is it not evident that a perfect knowledge of the laws of health, and a perfect living according to these laws, would so entirely subdue this evil that men would no longer die except by natural decay or by accident? Is it not evident, also, that the race will not attain this knowledge unless it be forced upon us by the necessity of avoiding the dread evil of disease? Now suppose, again, this ideal attained, suppose this dread evil subdued by complete knowledge, and again from our elevated intellectual position we look back over the ground. Shall we call that evil which was the necessary condition of our intellectual elevation? Evil, doubtless, it seems to us individuals who have suffered and are still suffering through our ignorance; but is such individual suffering or even individual death to be weighed against the psychical elevation of the individual and evolution of the race? Ought not the individual to be willing to suffer thus much vicariously for the race? Is not this seeming evil also a _real_ good? May we not, then, confidently generalize? May we not say that all physical evil is good in its general effect--that every law of Nature is beneficent in its general operation, and, if sometimes evil in its specific operation, is so only through our ignorance? Partly by survival of the fittest, and partly by intelligence, man, like other animals, brings himself in accord with the laws of Nature, and thus appropriates the good and avoids the evil, and Nature becomes beneficent only. But, also unlike any other animal, man by rational knowledge makes the laws of Nature his servants, and uses them for his own purposes, thus increasing his power and elevating the plane of his life.