Appetence and Emotion. 395 



Pleasurable sensations, on the other hand, may be long 

 continued without any depressing effect ; on the contrary, 

 they stimulate the whole system to increased action. 

 Hence it has come to pass that most or all sentient beings 

 have been developed in such a manner, through natural 

 selection, that pleasurable sensations serve as their habitual 

 guides. We see this in the pleasure from exertion, even 

 occasionally of great exertion, of the body or mind in the 

 pleasure of our daily meals, and especially in the pleasure 

 derived from sociability, and from loving our families. The 

 sum of such pleasures as these, which are habitual or 

 frequently recurrent, give, as I can hardly doubt, to most 

 sentient beings an excess of happiness over misery, although 

 they occasionally suffer much. Such suffering is quite 

 compatible with belief in natural selection ; which is not 

 perfect in its action, but tends only to render each species 

 as successful as possible in the battle for life with other 

 species, in wonderfully complex and changing circum- 

 stances." 



Passing now from the bodily feelings and wants to the 

 emotions, there can be no question that the simpler 

 emotions, of which I have taken fear and anger as typical, 

 are shared with us by the dumb brutes. And the interest- 

 ing observations of Mr. Douglas Spalding showed beyond 

 doubt that they are instinctive their manifestation being 

 prior to, and not the outcome of, individual experience. 

 Writing in Macmillari's Magazine, he says, "A young 

 turkey, which I had adopted when chirping within the 

 uncracked shell, was, on the morning of the tenth day of 

 its life, eating a comfortable breakfast from my hand, when ^ 

 the young hawk in a cupboard just beside us gave a shrill 

 ' Chip ! chip ! chip ! ' Like an arrow, the poor turkey shot to 

 the other side of the room, and stood there, motionless and 

 dumb with fear, until the hawk gave a second cry, when it 

 darted out at the open door right to the extreme end of the 

 passage, and there, silent and crouched in a corner, re- 

 mained for ten minutes. Several times during the course 

 of that day it again heard these alarming sounds, and in 



