And if any shall reply—­And what use if I do try?  What use, if I do try?  What use if I succeed in answering every question which you have propounded to-night?  Shall I be the happier for it?  Shall I be the wiser?

My friends, whether you will be the happier for it, or for any knowledge of physical science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot tell:  that lies in the decision of a Higher Power than I; and, indeed, to speak honestly, I do not think that bio-geology or any other branch of physical science is likely, at first at least, to make you happy.  Neither is the study of your fellow-men.  Neither is religion itself.  We were not sent into the world to be happy, but to be right; at least, poor creatures that we are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with being right, and not happy.  For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of us are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand’s recipe for perfect happiness on earth—­namely, a hard heart and a good digestion.  Therefore, as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our digestions, unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be made wise by physical science, even though we be not made happy.

And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do not understand—­the habit of mind which theologians call—­and rightly—­faith in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness, and out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir in us at first sight.  For our first feeling will be—­I know mine was when I began to look into these matters—­one somewhat of dread and of horror.

Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing against each other.  And their competition was so earnest and complete, that it did not mean—­as it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised country—­I will make a little more money than you; but—­I will crush you, enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up.  “Woe to the weak,” seems to be Nature’s watchword.  The Psalmist says:  “The righteous shall inherit the land.”  If you go to a tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe carefully a square acre of any English land, cultivated or uncultivated, you will find that Nature’s text at first sight looks a very different one.  She seems to say:  Not the righteous, but the strong, shall inherit the land.  Plant, insect, bird, what not—­Find a weaker plant, insect, bird, than yourself, and kill it, and take possession of its little vineyard, and no Naboth’s curse shall follow you:  but you shall inherit, and thrive therein, you, and your children after you, if they will be only as strong and as cruel as you are.  That is Nature’s law:  and is it not at first sight a fearful law?  Internecine competition, ruthless selfishness, so internecine and so ruthless that, as I have wandered in tropic forests, where this temper is shown more quickly and fiercely, though not in the least more evilly, than in our slow and cold temperate one, I have said:  Really these trees and plants are as wicked as so many human beings.