586 DISHARMONIES AND OTHER SHADOWS 



creatures should have pursued the plant regime of living on 

 air, water^ and salts is conceivable, but it would not have been 

 an adventurous resolute world, for the vigorous higher life 

 depends on a supply of high explosives manufactured by 

 other creatures. If animals had had to manufacture their 

 own munitions as plants do, there would not have been much 

 fighting, but there would not have been much thinking either. 

 But the critic of Nature explains that it is not the car- 

 nivorousness that offends him, — he does a little in that way 

 himself — it is the manner of its accomplishment. The gentle 

 disciple of Izaak Walton is pained that the Fishing-Frog 

 should use a rod and line. The housewife who sets a trap 

 for mice in the pantry affects to shudder at the ant-lion 

 which makes a pitfall for unwary insects. There is a taint 

 of insincerity about all this exotic tender-heartedness. The 

 joy of the cat is the grief of the mouse, says a Russian 

 proverb; but we go a-fishing with a light heart. We are 

 of more value than many trout. We do not deny that there 

 are some difficult cases, like that of the cat playing with 

 the mouse, which has perhaps an educational significance — 

 and what may not be done in the name of education — but in 

 the great majority of cases violent death is rapid and prob- 

 ably painless, and the accusation of cruelty is an irrelevant 

 anthropomorphism. We do not deny that there are what 

 look like dark shadows in Animate Nature, but we have seen 

 some of them disappear in the light of fuller knowledge, 

 and we think that William James was on the whole misled 

 by unawareness of the facts, when he wrote of Nature — 

 to some of us an alma mater — as '^ a harlot ", " all plasticity 

 and indifference ", " a moral multiverse and not a moral 

 universe ". " Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, 

 life and death keep house together in indissoluble partner- 



