"Oh, if you would but read your Browning! Hear what he says:--
"'I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else, Devised,--all pain, at most expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain,--to evolve, By new machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man--how else?-- To make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually God-like,
Enable man to wring, from out all pain, All pleasure, for a common heritage, To all eternity.'[2]
"I am surprised you think the existence of evil militates against the existence of a perfect Creator. A ribald controversialist was once asked how he would have improved the world had he had the making of it. He replied; 'For one thing I would have made health catching instead of disease. Yours is a similar _ad captandum_ style of argument. You must know as well as I do that our fevers are the result of dirt and neglect of the most elementary sanitary precautions; it is not nature that afflicts us so much as our artificial living and our vicious habits. As for lunacy, it is largely the product of vice, drink, and the race for wealth. With regard to pain, it is frequently conservative. As Theodore Parker points out, if we could put our fingers into the fire without pain, they would soon be destroyed; if dust did not make our eyes smart, their utility would soon be destroyed by rough usage; if we could eat improper food without unpleasant consequences, our digestive functions would soon be unfit for their work, and so forth."
Linda laughed at the idea of health being catching, and thought the advocate of design was cornered.
"For my part," said Elsworth, "I think the man was a great fool. Love is catching, as Coventry Patmore says, 'love that grows from one to all, and love is better than health, isn't it?'"
"I don't see," said the doctor, "that you have in the least affected my argument that evil could never have been permitted by an all-wise, omnipotent, and good Creator. Its existence proves the Creator not to have been all these, at any rate."
"A great deal of man's ill may be removed," said Elsworth; "indeed, amelioration is the dominant note of nature. If you will forgive me quoting my favourite poet Browning again--