Rev. P. Keith on the Siisceptibilitiei of hiving Structures. 257 



sensation of vegetables might be drawn from the fact of the 

 benevolence of the Deity, regarding the endowment as having 

 been conferred for the purpose of extending the blessing of 

 conscious existence to an additional and incalculably numer- 

 ous class of individual beings, which are rendered peculiarly 

 interesting to man, both from their beauty and utility. — But 

 as vegetables are exposed indiscriminately to the perpetual 

 attacks both of men and of animals, without having any effec- 

 tual means whether of defence or escape, — sensation could 

 hardly be regarded as a benefit to them, if they were even 

 endowed with it: it would rather be the means of affecting 

 them with pain. They are cut, and cropped, and mangled, 

 and mowed down, and still they are obliged to live and to 

 suffer. If you say that animals suffer also, and that God is yet 

 good, — we answer, that the cases are not altogether the same. 

 The lowest animal that exists has always some means or other 

 of defence against, or of escape from, the attacks of other ani- 

 mals or of man. The animal has consequently a chance for 

 the preservation of its life, which the plant has not. If you 

 say that the strongest still prevails, or that man, who is placed 

 at the head of the animal creation, does not scruple to slaugh- 

 ter such as are good for food, or to destroy such as have the 

 means of annoying him; — we acknowledge it to be a law of 

 nature, that one species of animal shall live at the expense or 

 by the destruction of another. Man is even the destroyer of 

 man ; yet it is not often by a destruction that is piece-meal ; 

 it is not by the cutting off of one slice today and another slice 

 tomorrow from the hip of the devoted victim, as the savage 

 Abyssinians are said to do to their cattle, — a cruelty which the 

 inferior animals, and even civilized men, inflict most unmerci- 

 fully upon vegetables, (if it be true that vegetables feel,) in the 

 many mowings of the green lawn, in the perpetual bite or 

 browsing of the tender herbage, in the pruning or nailing of 

 the annual shoot, and in the periodical clippings or loppings 

 of shrubs or of trees. It is rather by a destruction that is 

 prompt and sudden that man assails his victim, extinguishing 

 litii, and causing death in an instant; — and it is certain that 

 an animal can suffer death but once ; though a plant, upon this 

 supposition, might have many deaths to suffer. — As it is, we 

 have a sort of instinctive apprehension that plants do not feel: 

 hence we cut and cliop them up without mercy. Hence also 

 the mower whets his scythe, and the reaj)er his sickle, and 

 the woodman his axe, without experiencing any emotions 

 whether of sympathy or of sorrow ; and hence we can bear 

 to witness or to conten)})late the havock that is annually com- 

 mitted in the meadow or in the corn-field, or in the wood 

 N. .V. Vol. 1 1. No. 64. April 1832. 2 L or 



