II 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 
30 
prey till driven to do so by hunger. When an animal is 
caught, therefore, it is very soon devoured, and thus the first 
shock is followed by an almost painless death. Neither do 
those which die of cold or hunger suffer much. Cold is 
generally severest at night and has a tendency to produce 
sleep and painless extinction. Hunger, on the other hand, is 
hardly felt during periods of excitement, and when food is 
scarce the excitement of seeking for it is at its greatest. It 
is probable, also, that when hunger presses, most animals will 
devour anything to stay their hunger, and will die of gradual 
exhaustion and weakness not necessarily painful, if they do 
not fall an earlier prey to some enemy or to cold. 1 
Now let us consider what are the enjoyments of the lives 
of most animals. As a rule they come into existence at a 
time of year when food is most plentiful and the climate most 
suitable, that is in the spring of the temperate zone and at 
the commencement of the dry season in the tropics. They 
grow vigorously, being supplied with abundance of food ; and 
when they reach maturity their lives are a continual round of 
healthy excitement and exercise, alternating with complete 
repose. The daily search for the daily food employs all their 
faculties and exercises every organ of their bodies, while this 
exercise leads to the satisfaction of all their physical needs. 
In our own case, we can give no more perfect definition of 
happiness, than this exercise and this satisfaction; and we 
must therefore conclude that animals, as a rule, enjoy all the 
happiness of which they arc capable. And this normal state 
of happiness is not alloyed, as with us, by long periods — 
whole lives often — of poverty or ill-health, and of the un¬ 
satisfied longing for pleasures which others enjoy but to which 
we cannot attain. Illness, and what answers to poverty in 
animals — continued hunger — are quickly followed by unantici¬ 
pated and almost painless extinction. Where we err is, in 
giving to animals feelings and emotions which they do not 
possess. To us the very sight of blood and of torn or mangled 
limbs is painful, while the idea of the suffering implied by it 
1 The Kestrel, which usually feeds on mice, birds, and frogs, sometimes 
stays its hunger with earthworms, as do some of the American buzzards. 
The Honey-buzzard sometimes eats not only earthworms and slugs, but even 
corn ; and the Buteo borealis of North America, whose usual food is small 
mammals and birds, sometimes eats crayfish. 
