xix IS NATURE CRUEL? 375 



required for the purposes of their short existence ; that 

 anything approaching to what we term " pain " was unknown 

 to them. They had certain functions to fulfil which they 

 carried out almost automatically, though there was no doubt 

 a difference of sensation just enough to cause them to act in 

 one way rather than another. And as the whole purpose of 

 their existence and rapid increase was that they should 

 provide food for other somewhat higher forms — in fact, to be 

 eaten — there was no reason whatever why that kind of death 

 should have been painful to them. They could not avoid it, 

 and were not intended to avoid it. It may even have been 

 not only absolutely painless but slightly pleasurable — a 

 sensation of warmth, a quiet loss of the little consciousness 

 they had, and nothing more — " a sleep and a forgetting." 



People will not keep always in mind that pain exists in 

 the world for a purpose, and a most beneficent purpose — 

 that of aiding in the preservation of a sufficiency of the higher 

 and more perfectly organised forms, till they have repro- 

 duced their kind. This being the case, it is almost as certain 

 as anything not personally known can be, that all animals 

 which breed very rapidly, which exist in vast numbers, and 

 which are necessarily kept down to their average population 

 by the agency of those that feed upon them, have little 

 sensitiveness, perhaps only a slight discomfort under the 

 most severe injuries, and that they probably suffer nothing 

 at all when being devoured. For why should they ? They 

 exist to be devoured ; their enormous powers of increase are 

 for this end ; they are subject to no dangerous bodily injury 

 until the time comes to be devoured, and therefore they need 

 no guarding against it through the agency of pain. In this 

 category, of painless, or almost painless animals, I think we 

 may place almost all aquatic animals up to fishes, all the vast 

 hordes of insects, probably all Mollusca and worms ; thus re- 

 ducing the sphere of pain to a minimum throughout all the 

 earlier geological ages, and very largely even now. 



When we see the sharp rows of teeth in the earlier birds 

 and flying reptiles, we immediately think of the pain suffered 

 by their prey ; but the teeth were in all probability necessary 

 for seizing the smooth-scaled fishes or smaller land-reptiles, 

 which were swallowed a moment afterwards ; and as no 



