But, it will be asked, how does this view of life eliminate suffering as an evil from the world? How can it be shown that disease[84] and death, the fear and danger of which cast a perpetual shadow over life, are not evil things, responsible as such for the suffering of all creatures? Granted that man has attained his present high position in the evolutionary scale chiefly through his ability to feel, to suffer; granted that the establishment of morality, brought about largely by registration of contrast in sensation, leads directly to realisation of spiritual life; granted that we may be privileged thereby to exercise a transmuting influence upon evil and its effects, thus making us partakers in the progressive government of life; if our future evolution, proceeding on the same lines of development, entails an ever greater capacity to suffer, is it a desirable thing? Have not less highly organised creatures, with correspondingly lower degrees of consciousness and with less knowledge of the governing principle of life and their own responsibility towards that government, happier lives than men? Whither are we tending? What is the ultimate goal of[85] the recurring cycle of birth and death, manifested by the operation of natural laws, in the general scheme of life in which the evolution of man is but a part? The welfare of individual man has no meaning apart from its relation to the benefit of mankind as a progressive whole. If a man participate in the common habits of his fellows, he must take his share in those dangers to individual existence which the development of his race necessitates. The advantages which we to-day derive from our employment of social and scientific contrivances common to civilised communities have been wrought from the effort and suffering of men of past times. We are debtors to our ancestors who, by their own labour and sacrifice, have given us a better equipment for the battle of life than was their own inheritance from their forefathers. We are under an obligation to our race which, whether we discharge it willingly or no, is drawn from us by the operation of forces beyond our own control, as the just[86] equivalent of our gain. We cannot separate ourselves, humanly speaking, from our kind. Inasmuch as the spirit of humanity reaches out towards immortality from one generation to another, our lives are not our own. Rather are they hostages to fortune, to that evolutionary principle which, while allowing us as individuals to participate in the benefits actualised to-day as the results of the labours of past generations of men, also exacts from us our own contribution towards the slow perfecting of our kind.