DESTRUCTION AND MERCY. 149 
strange that the Creator should have made so many animals to suffer a violent death, and 
apparently to endure torturing pangs, by the lacerations to which they are subjected by 
their destroyers. The reflection is a just one, and one which until late years has never 
received a worthy answer. Endeavours were made to reconcile the Divine love with this 
apparent cruelty, by asserting that the lower animals were endued with so low a sense of 
pain that an injury which would inflict severest torture on a man, would cause but a 
slight pang to the animal. Yet, as all animals are clearly sensitive to pain, and many 
of ‘them are known to feel it acutely, this argument has but trifling weight. Moreover, 
the system which was insensible to pain would be equally dull to enjoyment, and thus 
we should reduce the animal creation to a level but little higher than that of the 
vegetables. 
The true answer is, that by some merciful and most marvellous provision, the mode of 
whose working is at present hidden, the sense of pain is driven out from the victim as 
soon as it is seized or struck by its destroyer. The first person who seems to have taken 
this view of the case was Livingstone, the well-known traveller, who learned the lesson by 
personal experience. After describing an attack made upon a Lion he proceeds :— 
“ Starting and looking half round, I saw the Lion just in the act of springing on_me. 
I was upon a little height ; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the 
ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier-dog 
does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that ‘which seems to be felt bya 
mouse after the first shake of the cat. It causes a sort of dreaminess, ti which there was 
no sense of pain or feeling of terror, though I was quite conscious of all that was 
happening. It was like what patients, partially under the influence of chloroform, describe, 
who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition was not the 
result of any mental process. The shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror 
in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals / 
killed by the carnivora ; and, if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for 
lessening the pain of death.” 
This fearful experience is, although most valuable, not a solitary one, and is made 
more valuable by that very fact. I am acquainted with a similar story of an officer of 
the Indian army, a German nobleman by birth, who, while in Bengal, was seized and 
carried away by a tiger. He described the whole scene in much the same language as 
that of Livingstone, saying that as far as the bodily senses were concerned, the chief 
sensation was that of a pleasant drowsiness, rather admixed with curiosity as to the 
manner in which the brute was going to eat him. Only by his reasoning powers, which 
remained unshaken, could he feel that his position was one of almost hopeless danger, 
and that he ought to attempt escape. Perhaps, in so sudden and overwhelming a shock, 
the mind may be startled for a time from its hold upon the nerves, and be, so to speak, 
not at home to receive any impression from the nervous system, Many men have fallen 
into the jaws of these fearful beasts, but very few have survived to tell their tale. In the 
case of Livingstone, rescue came through the hands of a Hottentot servant, who fired upon 
the Lion, and who was himself attacked by the infuriated animal. In the latter instance, 
the intended victim owed his life to a sudden whim of the tiger, which, after carrying him 
for some distance, threw him down, and went off without him. The officer used playfully 
to attribute his escape to his meagre and fleshless condition, which, as he said, induced 
the epicurean tiger to reject a dinner on so lean and tough an animal as himself. 
Those who have been in action are familiar with the indifference with which the 
severest wounds are received. There is one well-known instance of this apparent 
insensibility to pain, which occurred in the Crimean war. An officer was stooping to 
light his pipe at a camp-fire, when an enemy’s shell plumped into the midst of the embers, 
and exploded, knocking the pipe out of his hands. He uttered an exclamation of 
annoyance at the loss of his pipe, unconscious that the fragments of shell had carried off 
several of his fingers and frightfully shattered other portions of his hmbs. Even in eases 
of natural death a similar phenomenon occurs, and those who have expressed, i 
their last illness, the most utter terror of death, meet their dreaded fate with calm 
content, welcoming death as a friend instead of fearing him as a foe, 
