Abstract: It is good that there should be a world in which agents have the opportunity to choose freely to benefit or harm each other, especially in respect of their power, knowledge, and character. It is good too that in more limited ways animals should help and harm each other, although not as a result of a free choice. Our world is in this way providential, and that provides a further argument for God; if there is a God, we have reason to expect all this, but otherwise not. Death is not as such as evil, but merely the end of a good state.

Keywords: animals' death, free choice, death, evil,