252 THE BIRD WATCHER 
sensuous roll in the wager! made with such sense of 
enjoyment—so slow, so lazy, eking it out—the whole 
of the animal seeming to smack its lips. 
We “human mortals,” I believe, quite under- 
estimate the sensuous pleasures of animals. Their 
mere ways of moving must often be infinite joys 
to them, seeing that besides the motion itself—as 
with this seal, the gnu, or the springbok, the half- 
flying arboreal monkey, or the soaring bird—there is 
the ecstasy of perfect health and strength and the 
freedom of perfect nudity—absolute disencumbrance. 
The first of these may be felt almost, perhaps, in as 
great a degree by some savages, but if I may judge by 
my own experience it never is and never can be by a 
civilised man leading a civilised life. With us, speak- 
ing generally, health is more a negative than an affir- 
mative proposition. To be well is not to be ill. But 
in the veldt, where one walks all day and eats one 
hearty meal by the camp-fire at the end of it, it is 
like a strong wine that one has drunk. It is a mighty, 
stirring, active, compelling force—ending, however, in 
fever, which the animals don’t get. No doubt the 
pleasures of the intellect are of a higher order than 
those which spring from mere corporeal ecstasy ; but 
is the civilised man, writing a treatise, happier than 
the savage in his war-dance, or the capercailzie going 
through his love antics? ‘That is the question” ; 
or, in other words, does civilisation make for happi- 
ness ? 
Who, in spite of much laboured reasoning to the 
