282 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



the work of our own hands. To those animals which the 

 Deity in his wisdom has thought proper to subject to us, 

 and for any abuse of which trust a severe account will, 

 questionless, be exacted, to these indeed Man has contrived 

 to communicate no small portion of the misery which he 

 has himself created. Yet even these are happier than 

 Man ; they have no regret for the past, nor apprehension 

 of the future ; the present is all to them, and that present 

 is not always miserable. As for the wilder tribes, the 

 perfect possession of liberty, and the care of procuring sub- 

 sistence, is enough to constitute their happiness, and in 

 this respect the majority of them are far from being legi- 

 timate subjects of compassion. 



As for the species on which we have been writing, we 

 must conclude, that notwithstanding all the drawbacks 

 under which they labour, they cannot be unhappy ; their 

 strong and hard bodies, on which almost- every blow falls 

 in vain ; the obtuseness of all their sensations, which must 

 render them insensible to pain ; their extraordinary capa- 

 city of enduring privation of nourishment ; and, above all, 

 their wonderful degree of vitality*, which is never ac- 

 companied with acute feeling, all must contribute to shelter 

 these animals from any thing like misery. Their pleasures, 

 it is true, can be few or none ; but then the amount of the 

 pain in the balance sheet must be trifling indeed. We 

 shall find this to be pretty generally the case throughout 

 the universe. Where the Creator has vouchsafed to any 

 being an extraordinary capacity of enjoyment, it appears 

 to be necessarily accompanied by a proportionate suscepti- 

 bility of pain ; while the pent-house of insensibility that 

 intercepts the rays of the sun of joy, is also an adequate 



* The tenacity of life in the A'i and Unau approximates them to the 

 Reptile tribes : this is so great, that on one of these animals being 1 opened 

 and dissected, he did not die immediately, but the palpitation of the heart 

 continued for a considerable time after the operation. 



