THE EISE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 



place; and nothing could be worse for them than 

 to have a nervous dislike of " suffering." The 

 avoidance of injury when possible is, of course, 

 a cardinal principal of animal existence, but the 

 horror of " suffering " could only be a drag upon 

 the evolution of any creature other than man. 

 We have seen that living things, like the Sensitive 

 Plant, have acquired the useful habit of shrink- 

 ing from a touch, although they have no conscious 

 sense of personal suffering; and if other living 

 things had acquired this sense they could only 

 have done so because it was useful to them. 



What, then, is the use of the sense of " suffer- 

 ing " and unhappiness? Undoubtedly its use is 

 to impel the creature concerned to seek a remedy 

 and apply a cure. But animals other than man 

 have no means of doing this. Their instinctive 

 habits of avoiding and resenting injury exhaust 

 their resources in this direction ; and a subsequent 

 sense of suffering, which they could not alleviate, 

 and unhappiness, which they could not lighten, 

 would be a serious drawback to them, unfitting 

 them to do their best in the next crisis of the 

 struggle of existence. 



Therefore, it is scientifically certain that such 



animals cannot have acquired a conscious sense of 



suffering ; because we know that the lowest 



creatures do not possess it, and it could only have 



[103] 



