But now we are confronted with a more fundamental question: Could not God have obviated the phenomenon of pain altogether? Could He not have made us incapable of feeling any but pleasant sensations? Mill, who in his essay on _Nature_ devotes some--for him--almost vehement pages to this subject, reaches the conclusion that "the only admissible moral theory of Creation is that the Principle of Good _cannot_ at once and altogether subdue the powers of evil" [2]; and in dealing with the same topic in the essay on _Theism_, while admitting that "appearances do not indicate that contrivance was brought into play purposely to produce pain," he holds to the view that its very existence shows the power of God to be limited _ab extra_, by the material conditions under which He works:--
The author of the machinery is no doubt accountable for having made it susceptible to pain; but this may have been a necessary condition of its susceptibility to pleasure; a supposition which avails nothing on the theory of an omnipotent Creator, but is an extremely probable one in the case of a Contriver working under the limitation of inexorable laws and indestructible properties of matter.[3]
Such a view of the case, as we have already said in our previous chapter, is purely deistic; but we must now proceed to point out, with great respect for so great an intellect as Mill's, that the supposition which, he says, "avails nothing { 111} on the theory of an omnipotent Creator"--_viz._, that susceptibility to pleasure involves susceptibility to pain--seems to us to fit and cover the facts precisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not two different things which could conceivably exist apart from each other, but are only different manifestations of one and the same capacity, _viz._, for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever. We could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while _in_capable of feeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, while _in_sensible to musical discords; besides which, monotony of sensation annihilates sensation. On this point we may invoke against the pre-evolutionist Mill a modern scientific authority like Professor Fiske, who expresses himself to the effect that "without the element of antagonism there could be no consciousness, and therefore no world." "It is not a superficial but a fundamental truth," he observes, "that if there were no colour but red, it would be exactly the same thing as if there were no colour at all. . . If our ears were to be filled with one monotonous roar of Niagara, unbroken by alien sounds, the effect upon consciousness would be absolute silence. If our palates had never come in contact with any tasteful thing save sugar, we should know no more of sweetness than of bitterness. If we had never felt physical pain, we could not recognise physical pleasure. For { 112} want of the contrasted background, its pleasurableness would cease to exist. . . We are thus brought to a striking conclusion, the essential soundness of which cannot be gainsaid. _In a happy world there must be sorrow and pain._" [4] And this necessity, we would add, does not follow from God's failure to overcome any "inexorable laws and indestructible properties _of matter_," but is implied in the inexorable laws _of thought_--in that eternal right reason which makes it impossible for Deity to do what is self-contradictory or absurd.