Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/134

124 In his new and very interesting book on "Volcanoes," Professor J. W. Judd, of London, has taken up this subject, and his chapter on "The Part played by Volcanoes in the Economy of Nature" impresses us like a powerful sermon on the old problem of good and evil—and that has also something new in it. Professor Judd does not dwell upon the moral aspect of the subject, but we can not better introduce his view to our readers than by a reference to its ethical implications.

Nothing, of course, can have less claim upon the attention of men whose intelligence, however considerable of its sort, has never been directed to the understanding of nature, than what goes on in the interior of the earth. That, says a representative of this class, belongs to scientific speculation, and is no concern of his. He knows, indeed, of earthquakes and volcanoes as deadly agencies by which great numbers of lives are often ruthlessly destroyed; and he regards them as conspicuous examples of diabolism in nature; and when he hears it said that "volcanoes are the safety-valves of the globe," he is very glad to know that they have some possible use, however remote.

Now, ethics—the science of right and wrong, of good and bad—is certainly not an exact science; and yet it has a quantitative basis. In the constitution of this world, good and evil are inextricably mixed up, and the problem of their proportions is therefore fundamental in ethical inquiries. There is always more or less of each, and there are degrees of both. We are familiar with the terms small and great in their applications to evil and good, and we labor to diminish the former and increase the latter. It is natural that the estimates of the relative amounts of good and evil should vary, especially as so much depends upon the subjective condition of the estimator. The pessimist admits that there may be hours and perhaps places in which good prevails; but he maintains that, on the whole, evil so greatly predominates that life is not worth living. The optimist holds on the contrary that, while evil may be supreme at times, good is ascendant in the large view. The question between them, therefore, is mainly one of relative quantities.

If, now, it can be shown that in any given case good prevails over evil, say in the ratio of one hundred thousand to one, it is obvious that the pessimist will not have much margin left upon which to make a stand; and, if it can be further proved that this ratio holds on a stupendous scale, and, moreover, that it includes just those malign manifestations of Nature that are most cited as evidence of her vicious spirit, the pessimist will be left in a still worse predicament. This position may be familiarly illustrated. A certain considerable amount of life is violently destroyed each year by lightnings, storms, and floods; yet these effects are only the calamitous incidents of a great system of circulation of water and air over our globe by which all life is maintained. That system of movements gives good and evil, but, compared with their beneficence, the disastrous results they produce are absolutely insignificant. If we say that the good prevails over the evil at the rate of a million to one, the estimate is still very far within the limits of truth.

Professor Judd has shown that the same principle holds in regard to volcanoes and earthquakes. We know that by these agencies dwellings, villages, and even entire cities are reduced to heaps of ruins, often with the direct destruction of multitudes of people, and furthermore that famines, pestilences, and social disorganizations frequently follow. But these catastrophes, terrible as they may be, are the results of a system of overwhelming beneficence. The subterranean energies, of which earthquakes and volcanoes are the striking manifestations, are necessary to