MISTAKEN KINDNESS 27 



maturity perishes, it suffers in dying sometimes very 

 acutely; but if left to grow cold and fade out of 

 life at this stage it can hardly be said to suffer. It 

 is no more conscious than a chick in the shell; take 

 from it the warmth that keeps it in being, and it 

 drops back into nothingness without knowing and, 

 we may say, without feeling anything. There may 

 indeed be an incipient consciousness in that small, 

 soft brain in its early vegetative stage, a first faint 

 glimmer of a bright light to be, and a slight sensation 

 of numbness may be actually felt as the body grows 

 cold, but that would be all. 



Pain is so common in the world ; and, owing to the 

 softness and sensitiveness induced in us by an indoor 

 artificial life since that softness of our bodies reacts on 

 our minds we have come to a false or an exaggerated 

 idea of its importance, its painfulness, to put it that 

 way; and we should therefore be but making matters 

 worse, or rather making ourselves more miserable, by 

 looking for and finding it where it does not exist. 



The power to feel pain in any great degree comes 

 into the bird's life after this transitional period, and 

 is greatest at maturity, when consciousness and all 

 the mental faculties are fully developed, particularly 

 the passion of fear, which plays continually on the 

 strings of the wild creature's heart with an ever vary- 

 ing touch, producing the feeling in all degrees from 

 the slight disquiet, which is no sooner come than gone, 

 to extremities of agonising terror. It would perhaps 

 have a wholesome effect on their young minds, and save 



