Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/309

284 aspect of reality in a totally different direction. The higher the realities that we study, the harder the task. The heavens declare very many things not wholly clear to us; but the earth and man declare, as natural facts, very many more and more confusing things. Only a poetical abstraction can show us any one plan of religious value in the world of sense, any one declaration of anybody’s glory therein. An equally strong opposing interest would find just as good evidence for what it sought if it should hold another view of what is designed. Nature is, so regarded, a confused hum of voices. “Nature,” says one voice, “is meant to provide bountifully for the wants of sentient life.” “Therefore,” says another voice, “all the weak, the sick, the old, must starve, and all the carnivorous destroy their neighbors.” “Nature aims at the evolution of the highest type of life,” says the first voice. “Therefore,” it is replied, “she bountifully provides swarms of parasites of all sorts to feed on higher life.” “Nature desires order and unity,” says the voice from the heavens. “Therefore she makes meteors and comets,” replies the echoing voice. — And if now the Fiend appears, and suggests, as the only satisfactory design-hypothesis, something of this sort, how could experience answer him? — “Nature,” he says, “is designed by a being who delights in manifold activity of all sorts, in variety of organization throughout the world, in the fine contrasts of the numberless forms of sentient life, and in whatever means vigor. He likes to see many living creatures, and he likes to see them fight. He likes the sight of suffering, as well as of joy;