In the next place, many of the so-called evils of life do not involve any actual suffering. If for instance a man loses the sight of one eye, he need not have any pain; and were he originally blind the possession of even one eye would have been thought a priceless blessing. Again, however great may be the sufferings of life, they cannot be as great as its _joys_, since nearly everyone wishes to go on living. While it is undeniable that human pain, like that of animals, is most useful, serving to warn men of dangers and diseases, which would otherwise lead to their destruction.
Moreover, in a material world like ours, if the forces of nature act according to fixed laws, a certain amount of suffering seems _inevitable_. If, for example, the force of gravity always acts as it does, it will occasionally cause a tower to fall and injure someone. Such an event could only be avoided by God's continually interfering with these forces. But this would render all human life a hopeless confusion. While, at present, owing to these forces being invariable, a great deal of the evil which might otherwise result from them can be foreseen and avoided. If, however, men will not avoid it,--if, for instance, in spite of the numerous eruptions of Vesuvius, they still choose to go and live on its slopes,--it is hard to see how they can blame anyone but themselves. In the same way, if a man chooses to sit on the safety valve of an engine, it is his own fault if he gets blown up.
And even in other cases, when the evil cannot be foreseen, as in an unexpected earthquake, it is at least open to doubt whether it is any worse for a number of men to die like this, suddenly and together, than that they should all die in the usual way, slowly, one by one, and often after a long illness. It of course appeals more to the imagination, but it probably involves less suffering.
Thus we may say that human suffering, excluding that due to man himself, is by no means so great as it seems; that it is, as a rule, more than counter-balanced by human happiness; and that a certain amount seems not only useful, but in a world like ours inevitable. But though all these considerations are undoubtedly true, and undoubtedly lessen the difficulty, they do not remove it altogether.