210 A MORAL INFERENCE. 



" The poor beetle, which we tread upon, 

 In corporal sufferance feels as great a pang 

 As when a giant dies." 



The existence of any insect brain has been denied by Lin- 

 naeus and subsequent naturalists ; but Cuvier and Lamarck so 

 denominate the upper knot of the nervous chord, because dis- 

 tinguished by the sending forth of nerves to the principal 

 organs of the senses. The multiplied and detached centres of 

 sensation, thus furnished by the knots or ganglions, sufficiently 

 account for life and motion in the divided portions of insect 

 frames ; also for their seeming to feel comparatively little 

 general pain from the loss of limbs, or even head. 



Last, not least, there is another reason, built on the moral 

 attributes of the Great Creator, for believing that the insect 

 frame is one of extreme insensibility to outward injury. Can 

 we imagine that He whose " mercy is over all his works," 

 would do other than protect by a shield of comparative obtuse- 

 ness that innumerable multitude of living things, which, from 

 their numbers and minuteness, often also in the seeming end of 

 their creation (that of affording food for others), are exposed 

 to continual mutilation, as well as violent destruction. Were 

 it otherwise, independently of what they would endure from 

 other agencies, of what an infinity of insect sufferings should 

 we daily, hourly, minutely, be the involuntary cause ! 



Children are almost always disposed to the commission of 

 acts of cruelty ; but only in most cases from ignorance or 

 want of thought : for there is, we believe, in every unperverted 

 mind a natural repugnance to the taking of the life we cannot 

 give. Long ago we attempted to make something of an ento- 

 mologic collection were eager enough in pursuit too rude, 

 doubtless, in triumphant capture; but when it came to the 

 cold-blooded business of impalement, the pin fell from our 

 grasp, and the prisoners regained their liberty. We were then 

 too happy in the bright buoyancy of our own spring-time to 

 bear to deprive one of them of an existence so much like our 



