THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 



prey till driven to do so by hunger. When an animal is 

 caught, therefore, it is very soon devoured, and thus the first 

 shock is followed by an almost painless death. Neither do 

 those which die of cold or hunger suffer much. Cold is 

 generally severest at night and has a tendency to produce 

 sleep and painless extinction. Hunger, on the other hand, is 

 hardly felt during periods of excitement, and when food is 

 scarce the excitement of seeking for it is at its greatest. It 

 is probable, also, that when hunger presses, most animals will 

 devour anything to stay their hunger, and will die of gradual 

 exhaustion and weakness not necessarily painful, if they do 

 not fall an earlier prey to some enemy or to cold.^ 



NoAV let us consider what are the enjoyments of the lives 

 of most animals. As a rule they come into existence at a 

 time of year when food is most plentiful and the climate most 

 suitable, that is in the spring of the temperate zone and at 

 the commencement of the dry season in the tropics. They 

 grow vigorously, being supplied with abundance of food ; and 

 when they reach maturity their lives are a continual round of 

 healthy excitement and exercise, alternating with complete 

 repose. The daily search for the daily food employs all their 

 faculties and exercises every organ of their bodies, while this 

 exercise leads to the satisfaction of all their j^hysical needs. 

 In our own case, we can give no more perfect definition of 

 happiness, than this exercise and this satisfaction ; and we 

 must therefore conclude that animals, as a rule, enjoy all the 

 happiness of which they are capable. And this normal state 

 of happiness is not alloyed, as ^vith us, by long periods — 

 whole lives often — of poverty or ill-health, and of the un- 

 satisfied longing for pleasures which others enjoy but to which 

 we cannot attain. Illness, and what answers to poverty in 

 animals — continued hunger — are quickly followed by unantici- 

 pated and almost painless extinction. Where we err is, in 

 giving to animals feelings and emotions which they do not 

 possess. To us the very sight of blood and of torn or mangled 

 limbs is painful, while the idea of the suffering implied by it 



^ The Kestrel, which usually feeds on mice, birds, and frogs, sometimes 

 stays its hunger with earthworms, as do some of the American buzzards. 

 The Honey-buzzard sometimes eats not only earthworms and slugs, but even 

 corn ; and the Buteo borealis of North America, whose usual food is small 

 mammals and birds, sometimes eats crayfish. 



