196 OTHEE ANIMALS 



sentences of imprisonment. A few of the larger animals, 

 of course, may affect human life injuriously, but as they 

 form an infinitesimal portion of a zoo's inhabitants, and 

 as we never dream of confining the most injurious part 

 insects it is plain that the punishment does not fit the 

 crime. But in their present stage men are not governed 

 either by logic or abstract ethics. The most rational way of 

 treating wild animal life is to leave it alone, thinking out 

 the most merciful and effective plans of dealing with it 

 when it can be proved beyond dispute either to be indis- 

 pensable for food or to conflict with human necessities. 

 I think that Mr. Davenport Hill is right, and that for 

 people with a just view and an imaginative knowledge 

 of animal life, the great majority of existing zoos must 

 be objects of dislike and shame rather than of enjoyment, 

 but at the same time that the principle of a zoo, of a pre- 

 serving institution, to counteract in some degree the 

 insane rage of destruction which is emptying the world, 

 must be admitted to be beneficent. 



The practical policy and ethics, then, are not to abolish 

 zoos but to reform them. It has been recently argued 

 that even minor improvements in our zoo are needless, 

 because the animals are happier in captivity than in their 

 native wilds. That zoologists should lend themselves to 

 such an argument shakes one's faith in experts. It is the 

 plea of the sentimentalist. For happiness in this con- 

 nection can only mean security, an immunity from the 

 risks and adventures of the " struggle for existence," the 

 same kind of security that the animal parasite seeks and 

 obtains from those healthy and arduous responses which 

 have been the first condition of all evolutionary progress. 

 The forfeit the parasite has to pay is degeneration ; its 

 permanent bed of roses is bought at the price of that 

 choice, initiative, vigour, experience, conflict with circum- 

 stance, endeavour, and intensity of living which operate 

 in an animal's normal reaction to its environment, and are 

 the psychological cause of the formation of new species, of 



