COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF MEN AND ANIMALS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 764, 22 October 1886, Page 9

COMPARATIVE HAPPINESS OF MEN AND ANIMALS.

Nineteenth Century.

The vicissitudes of the weather may he responsible for more suffering among the lower animals than in the case of man, bat we who live in England are perhaps inclined to overrate the amount ofinconvenience occasioned to the world at large by this cause. When our English winters are really rigorous, then we do see a certain amount of both amongst flocks and birds, but that is due rather to the capriciousneßs than to the actual rigour of the season. The corresponding changes which over ihe greater portion of the large continents occur with more regularity are foreseen and provided for by animals as well as man. Either by change of coat, by migration, or by hybernation, most animals and birds contrive to endure or to avoid tho cold of northern regions, and in those cases in which no cortesponding instinct has been developed it may bo safely inferred that the necessity has never been sufficiently felt. We are too apt lo over-estim-.te the sensitiveness to cold of other organisations. We should remember that, With the exception of the hermit-crab, man is the only unclothed animal, and as a protection against cold man’s garments are a very poor substitute for a woolly or hairy hide covering the whole body without joint or opening. If anyone will carefully notice a deg in his kennel after a night of intense frost, he will be surprised how little inconvenience the animal has suffered from the low temperature. As for rain and damp weather, the consequences to human beings are far more serious than any that trouble the animal world from that source. We come, then, to what in the miud of the artist and of the casual observer occupies the chief place in the catalogue of animal miseries—the physical injuries and violent deaths due cither to conflict between individuals or to the capture and slaughter by carnivorous creatures of their prey, to which, perhaps, if animals themselves were consulted, they would add the ravages in their number committed by man. This is the aspect of animal life which was condensed for the instruction of children by the popular versifier who concluded that * God had made them so,’ which dismal doctrine we have tacitly assented without inquiry whether it is really the ordinary occupation of bears and lions to fight, or whether, on the other hand, they are not very well content to get on wil faout fighting so long as hunger or jealousy does not call for such exertion. Now we ought at least to try to be fair with those who cannot defend themselves ; we need not endeavor to clothe the carnivora with the wool of the sheep, but let us try to see them as they are, let us endeavor to do them justice. And wp do not do them justice when we accuse them of indiscriminate cruelty. Cruelty is rare in the animal world; the present writer is very much inclined to doubt whether it exists at all, though the instances of the cat, the hawk, and the Javan loris are perhaps obstacles to the acceptance of such a statement. Cruel in effect the carnivora no doubt are, but it is a cruelty such as that of the skilful butcher who takes the best and shortest way he know 3 to attain his purpose. It is cruelty iu the way of business, either for food, or from anger or revenue, to maintain supremacy or protect the household. The lion kills its prey or its opponent in a straightforward, businesslike way, as an act which ought to be done, and must be got through as speedily a 3 possible. The higher refinement of intentional, delibera*e cruelty is reserved for the more intellectual being. If-the history of the most bloodthirsty of the carnivora came to be related it would contain no chapter such as the one which tells how Einar, Earl of Orkney, with his sword carved the back of the captive Halfdan the long-legged into the form of an eagle, dividing the spice lengthwise and separating the rib?, and then lifted the lungs alofd in the air as an offering to Odin ! The victims of the carnivora have, then, at all events, this advantage, that they perish speedily ; moreover they perish under circumstances eithor of struggle or flight which probably minimise the suffering. Sudden death not the terrors that it has for man, whom it deprives of his hour of preparation ; to animals it is an unmixed benefit to die speedily, so that on the whole it is quite possible the operations of the carnivora result in a real economy of pain. A more important consideration is this : how far is the suffering from wounds or sickness of I one of the lower animals comparable with the suffering undergone by mankind from the like causes. Is it not in all probability utterly insignificant in comparison, as insignificant as are “the mental troubles of an animal when contrasted with ours ? The nervous organisation of a wild animal is so much coarsergrained (to speak metaphorically), so much less delicately nurtured than that of civilised man, that the same wound which would cause intense pain in the latter will. pass unheeded in tho former. The wolf will give no cry of pain though a limb be severed, while the humanised dog cries out if his toe is trodden on. A corresponding difference can readily be observed in man himself, between the European and the North American Indian, or between civilised man in his drawing-room and the same man reducing himself to a semi-savage state on the field of battle- It needs not to go very far down the scale of existence before coming to creatures to whom, quite obviously, the loss of a limb is a matter of very small concern, and whose injuries are rapidly and completely repaired by regrowth ; frpm this point there is, no doubt, a gradual, very gradual increase in susceptibility, until we reach the apes, or even, we might say, until we reach savage man, and then there is a wide gulf. With civilisation and regular habits comes a quite different scale of proportion between injuries and suffering. One daughter of Eve suffers to bring her child into the world, more pain than is suffered by all the ewes on the Welsh hills during a whole season, and one man Aying of cancer endures more than all the oxen slain for food in a

whole month. We have now instituted a comparison between the bodily conditions of men arid of animals, and with what result ? Starting with the proposition that man’s total happiness depends prinsinally on them local ganglionic pleasures, we have been ledjto the conclusion that all those very pleasures are present also in the organisation of tho lower animals, an liminished, so far as we can see, in force, and even with some additional advantages. -And as to physical suffering, we have inferred that its intensity is so much less in animals than in man that, even if the indi vidunl instances of it are more frequent, the balance of advantage would probably remain with the brutes. Briefly, therefore, our conclusion is that, so far as bodily pains and pleasures are concerned, if in humanity there be a surp'us of pleasure ovor pain, there is in brutes a still greater surplus ; if in humanity there be anything like an equality between pleasure and pain, there is in brutes a large preponderance of pleasure ; if in humanity pa ; n predominate, then in brutes the proportion should be reversed.