In addition, I have the satisfaction--a meagre satisfaction you may call it, but a satisfaction all the same--of knowing that by the ploughing and harrowing of my heart a step is taken toward that future in which hearts shall be less harrowed and ploughed. "It must never happen again." That is what we keep saying with regard to the Great War. Well, it may happen again. We have as yet no trustworthy pledge to the contrary. But of this we may be sure, that it will not happen again very often. It is less likely to happen again for the very reason that it has happened. If the Great War does not prove to be the last war it is the more probable that the next war will. I mean that we do learn our lessons, though we learn them only as feeble-minded children learn theirs. Agony by agony, something is gained, and my personal agony counts with the rest. The fact may give me no more than the faintest consolation, and possibly none at all; and still in the long, slow stages of our upward climb my agony counts, whether its counting consoles me or not. XI The inference that we come into the life of this planet for an "appointed time" we draw from what we see of God's system of order. All other things do so, as far as we observe. The plant springs, to grow and bloom, to bear fruit and seed, and so renew itself. Fish, bird, and animal have their appointed round varying only in detail from that of the plant. Man's appointed round would seem to vary only in detail from that of the animal, except that he himself interferes with it. To the best of my knowledge the plant, from the blade of grass to the oak or the orchid, always fulfils its life-span, unless some act or accident cripples or destroys it. I mean that we never see God bringing the shoot above the soil just to nip it before it unfolds. We never see Him bring the bud to the eve of blossoming just to wither it. Having given it its mission He supplies it with rain, sun, and sustenance to bring that mission to its end. True, the plant has enemies, like everything else, enemies which it may not escape. But generally speaking, it does escape them, and lives to finish its task. So, too, with the more active living thing. It, too, has its enemies. It, too, may not escape them. But assuming that it does, God allows it, to the best of our observation, to work out its full development. The only "bereavement" he brings to the lion, the thrush, or the elephant, or any other creature capable of grief is, apparently, from those hostile sources of which the hostility is more or less gratuitous. A man shoots a lion, or the lion kills an antelope; but they do so through misreading of God's Will, not through fulfilling it.