thrifty, yet could anything be more prodigal or more cynical than the waste of individual lives? Does it not remind one of Charles Lamb's famous story of the Chinaman whose house accidentally burned down and roasted a pig, whereupon the dainty meat was tasted and its fame spread abroad until epicures all over China were to be seen carrying home pigs and forthwith setting fire to their houses? We need but add that the custom thus established lasted for centuries, during which every dinner of pig involved the sacrifice of a homestead, and we seem to have a close parody upon the wastefulness of Nature, or of what is otherwise called in these days the Cosmic Process. Upon such a view as this the Cosmic Process appears in a high degree unintelligent, not to say immoral. [Illustration] III _Caliban's Philosophy_ Polytheism easily found a place for such views as these, inasmuch as it could explain the unseemly aspects of Nature offhand by a reference to malevolent deities. With Browning's Caliban, in his meditations upon Setebos, that god whom he conceived in his own image, the recklessness of Nature is mockery engendered half in spite, half in mere wantonness. Setebos, he says, "is strong and Lord, Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so. Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: So He." Such is the kind of philosophy that commends itself to the beastly Caliban, as he sprawls in the mire with small eft things creeping down his back. His half-fledged mind can conceive no higher principle of action--nothing more artistic, nothing more masterful--than wanton mockery, and naturally he attributes it to his God; it is for him a sufficient explanation of that little fragment of the Cosmic Process with which he comes into contact. [Illustration] IV _Can it be that the Cosmic Process has no Relation to Moral Ends?_