This is well put, but the interest of the book chiefly consists in its attempts to show in detailed instances how things that are evil may have been made so. The author boldly argues that, if the normal course had been followed, "birds and beasts of prey and venomous reptiles would never have been evolved." "Evolutionists," he says, "are agreed that it is just the fierce struggle of created things that has produced these birds and beasts of prey, and that there can be {66} little doubt that it is the malignity of the struggle that has produced the venom of so many reptiles."[18] Instances are given in which such venom may now be developed as the result of rage or terror in an otherwise harmless animal. "A few years ago it was reported that the late M. Pasteur 'cultivated' the poison of human saliva to such a point that he was able to produce with it many of the effects of the most virulent snake poisons."[19] Had they not been inflamed by the terror of the struggle for existence, "tigers and hyaenas, vultures and sharks, ferrets and polecats, wasps and spiders, puff-adders and skunks" might have turned their undoubted abilities in other more desirable directions.[20] Again, "it is the perpetual effort, generation after generation, through long ages, to repair the mischief inflicted by enemies," that accounts for "the fecundity of the codfish and other creatures. The more prolific it becomes, the more enemies it can feed; and the more they multiply, the more prolific it grows." A vicious circle indeed! Even "earthquakes, storms, droughts, deluges," are explained as due to a certain want of balance and failure in adjustment.[21] Certainly, if we had to choose between the idea {67} of a careless or indifferent God, and the belief in a God who has given us ample proofs of a generally beneficent purpose, but who has, for reasons of the meaning of which we as yet can have only the vaguest conceptions, allowed Himself to be hindered and thwarted on the way to His goal, with results of suffering to Himself even greater than those endured by His creatures; if these were the alternatives before us, there can scarcely be one of us who would hesitate to say towards which of them his reason and conscience would confidently point him. [1] _Origin of Species_, Chap. III. [2] _Life and Letters_. [3] _Thoughts on Religion_, pp. 92, f. [4] p. 94. [5] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 309. [6] Address by Sir Frederick Treves at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, October, 1905. [7] p. 380. [8] p. 377. [9] p. 381. [10] p. 375. [11] p. 383. [12] p. 377. Among the illustrations that have been adduced of the insensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more extraordinary than this: "A crab will continue to eat, and apparently relish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger one!"--(Transactions of Victoria Institute, Vol. XXV., p. 257). [13] p. 384. [14] William Allingham's _Diary_, p. 226.