24 THE TRINITY FOOT BEAGLES 



becoming to a man of learning and piety than that, having unwit- 

 tingly placed himself in a false position, he should honourably confess 

 his mistake. AVere you then to call upon a pack of hounds to follow 

 with their musical barking the trail of those beasts which they are 

 naturally quaUfied to pursue, and on overtaking the same to bite and 

 slay them, you must see that in directing them you would be doing 

 nothing contrary to reason or morality. I grant, sir, that such action 

 might not commend itself to your personal taste, and that your habits 

 of life have not trained you for such activities, but I hope that when 

 you hear of others, such as those junior members of your University 

 whose birth and training has been among such pursuits, and who 

 maintain, as I have heard, a pack of most excellent beagles, you will 

 confess their sport to be wholesome, manly, and laudable, and them- 

 selves a credit to whatsoever society they may belong. 



It may further be premised that in the struggles of nature animals 

 do not and can not suffer as we might do in their place. The problems 

 of animal psychology are too technical and too complicated for dis- 

 cussion here, but it may be said : — 



(1) That pain is the disagreeable consciousness of injury. 



(2) That the possession of a consciousness, such as alone makes 

 pain possible, by animals is at best very doubtful. 



The same lack of consciousness precludes the possibility of the 

 mental agonies of fear. It is, of course, true that animals display 

 the outward cries, expressions, and gestures of these emotions, but 

 these can occur reflexly, and may be, and prol)ably are, older than 

 the conscious states associated with them in man. It is very ques- 

 tionable whether animals experience pain. And be it remembered 

 that animals do not think, but that their actions are based on the 

 inherited impulsive response to recurring situations which we call 

 instinct. A hen partridge is often in the presence of danger, and 

 always shams cripple in the same way to decoy the enemy away from 

 her young. She must act on impulse and not on a thought-out scheme 

 of mimicry. And creatures which have not much conscious thought 

 can have no more conscious feeling. 



The argument here brietl;)^ indicated clears nature, and therefore 



