IS NATURE REALLY CRUEL?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20361, 19 March 1928, Page 13

IS NATURE REALLY CRUEL?

The only people who have any right to speak about The cruelty of Nature are the thorough-going vegetarians—-all honour to them and more honour (writes Professor J. Arthur Thomson in John o’ London's Weekly). But those who charge Nature with cruelty must be more than vegetarians. They must abstain from setting traps for mice or laying poison for rats; they must do without furs, of course, and even, we suspect, abstain from buying an eiderdown quilt for tlie baby. As for fly-papers, they are anathema; and if we blame Nature, dare we kill a snake? We like Darwin’s common sense: —“When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of Nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” In the strict sense cruelty implies the enjoyment of the infliction of unnecessary pain, and there are at the most very few instances of this subtlety among even the highest animals. We nave scon a buck antelope chasing and goring an unstart of his kin till the rival dripped with blood. There may have been pain here, especially afterwards but there was no cruelty in the senior’s severe punishment. We do not go the length of saying that “ every lirospeet pleases and only man is vile,” for there are some wild doings in Nature; but we a,re inclined to think that man Ims a monopoly of cruelty. One iof the difficult cases is the cat’s playing with the mouse", but even that familiar sight is not a clear instance of cruelty, ns wo could show if we had space. A caution to he kept in mind, however, is that domesticated and captive animals often develop unpleasant ways, for which man, not Nature, is responsible. And another caution is our ignorance of the gamut of pain. A wasp curtailed of half its body will continue nonchalantly sipping jam. and the legged' part of an ant may work for hours after losing all the rest!