THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



For instance, one controversialist who may be 

 taken as a type of many has written to me that 

 I shall never be able to persuade him that animals 

 do not feel pain, although in another part of his 

 letter he agrees that they " may not be consciously 

 happy or unhappy." That is to say, he admits 

 my argument, but he cannot see that, if admitted, 

 it destroys his preconceived notion of the " feel- 

 ing " of "pain." That is not his fault. We all 

 think in words ; and there are no ready-made 

 words in which we can think of animals feeling 

 pain without being conscious of it. 



We can think of plants being " sensitive " or 

 even of low animals "suffering injury" without 

 conscious feeling; but as soon as we think of the 

 higher animals, creatures of flesh and blood, the 

 words " sensitive " and " suffering " carry a 

 totally different meaning. 



This is very illogical, because the lower animals 

 graduate so finely upwards that there is no point 

 in the scale at which you can say, " Here con- 

 sciousness beings." It is only when you come to 

 man himself that reasons leap to the mind at once 

 to prove that by man the realm jof consciousness 

 is entered for the first time. 



"Why should we assume that other animals 

 are spared the consciousness of pain which is such 

 a condition in man's life? " is a question which I 

 [14] 



