.154 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
pain would serve to indicate. The want of a capacity 
for pain in insects is not singular and exceptional, it 
is only another illustration of the law which holds 
throughout the animal creation, that nothing is 
given, sense, or power, or function, but what has a 
certain use. Insects have, in an infinitely higher 
degree than other animals, certain sensations and 
instincts which are given to them for special purposes. 
But when such instincts or sensations, and the 
capacity for pain amongst them, would be super- 
fluous, or might be injurious, these are withheld. 
Take away the painful sensations which come from 
the skin and its appendages, those attendant on 
inflammation and those dependent on nervous de- 
bility or excitement, all which an insect cannot suffer 
at all, or only in a very slight degree; take away 
these, and the chapter of possible insect suffering 
is reduced within very narrow limits indeed. Ina 
few words, the want of any apparent purpose which 
could be answered by the presence, and the manifest 
advantages accruing from the absence, of any high 
capacity for pain, the inability of the ordinarily sen- 
sitive structures to give rise to it in them, and the 
inadequacy of their nervous system to receive it, all 
incline strongly to the conclusion that pain, as we 
understand the word, is not felt by insects. 
