CONSCIOUSNESS AND PAIN 



73 



"Their nerves are so rudely distributed in 

 loose knots all over the body, instead of being 

 closely bound into a single central S3'stem as 

 with ourselves, that they can scarcelv possess 

 a consciousness of pain at all analogous to 

 our own" (ibid, 12). Of course, if animals of 

 as high an organization as insects and snails 

 are thought to be meagerly endowed with 

 sensibility, animals of still lower grade, and 

 those especialh^ that are without nerves must 

 be quite outside the bounds of consideration, 

 to say nothing of plants. 



But there is another way in which to ap- 

 proach the matter; and one, it seems to me, 

 that leads to results more in accord with our 

 present understanding of the unity of nature 

 and the evolution of organic forms. Living 

 protoplasm is a very unstable substance. 

 Living organisms of even the lowest tA-pe 

 have but a fighting chance for continued ex- 

 istence. Life, asks the poet, what is it? 



"A frail and fickle tenement it is ; 

 Which, like the brittle glass which measures time, 

 Is broke ere half its sands are run." 



— Notes and Queries, 1863. 



The smallest and most structureless being-, 

 as well as the largest and most intelligent, 

 must guard itself against bodily. accidents of 

 all kinds, it must look out for its daily means 

 of subsistence, and furthermore, it must main- 

 tain itself against the encroachments of fel- 



General 

 irritability 



