Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 



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more, really, do we know about it, aside from 

 our belief in Divine Revelation, or in the deduc- 

 tions of metaphysics? What data have the 

 brutes for supposing that it gives " surcease of 

 sorrow," or offers any refuge from distress, 

 or even that such a change can be obtained by 

 one's own act? 



To comprehend the fact, not to say the na- 

 ture, of death, one must comprehend the fact of 

 self-life, and all that we know of the range of 

 brute intelligence leads us to deny its ability 

 to postulate self-existence. No experience can 

 avail brutes in judging the effect of being lifeless, 

 and every case of death seen must seem to the 

 onlookers (if they " sense " it at all) utter ruin 

 ^something to be strenuously avoided. This 

 is the natural physical view of death which must 

 prevail throughout all nature, or life would 

 come to an end. Everything in the natural 

 world shapes itself and tends toward the preser- 

 vation, in order to insure the propagation, of 

 life. All feral instincts face that way, and to 

 impartial laws and processes, with which indi- 

 viduals have nothing to do, is alone intrusted 



