48 PKOLOGUE I 



evolution had attained to consciousness, pleasure 

 and pain were still absent. Such a world would 

 be without either happiness or misery; no act 

 could be punished and none could be rewarded ; 

 and it could have no moral purpose. 



6. Suppose, for argument's sake, that all 

 mammals and birds are subjects of pleasure and 

 pain. Then we may be certain that these forms 

 of consciousness were in existence at the beginning 

 of the Mesozoic epoch. From that time forth, 

 pleasure has been distributed without reference to 

 merit, and pain inflicted without reference to 

 demerit, throughout all but a mere fraction of the 

 higher animals. Moreover, the amount and the 

 severity of the pain, no less than the variety and 

 acuteness of the pleasure, have increased with 

 every advance in the scale of evolution. As 

 suffering came into the world, not in consequence 

 of a fall, but of a rise, in the scale of being, so 

 every further rise has brought more suffering. 

 As the evidence stands, it would appear that the 

 sort of brain which characterises the highest 

 mammals and which, so far as we know, is the 

 indispensable condition of the highest sensibility, 

 did not come into existence before the Tertiary 

 epoch. The primordial anthropoid was probably, in 

 this respect, on much the same footing as his pithe- 

 coid kin. Like them he stood upon his " natural 

 rights/' gratified all his desires to the best of his 

 ability, and was as incapable of either right or 



