IS XATUKE CiWELi 407 



simultaneous deep wounds by teeth and claws, either cause 

 death at once, or so paralyse the nervous system that no pain 

 is felt till death very rapidly follows. It must be remembered 

 that in a state of nature the Carnivora hunt and kill to satisfy 

 hunger, not for amusement; and all conclusions derived from 

 the house-fed cat and mouse are fallacious. Even in the case 

 of man, with his highly sensitive nervous system, which has 

 been developed on account of his unprotected skin and excessive 

 liability to accidental injury, seizure by a lion or tiger is hardly 

 painful or mentally distressing, as testified by those who have 

 been thus seized and have escaped.^ 



Our whole tendency to transfer our sensations of pain to all 

 other animals is grossly misleading. The probability is, that 

 there is as great a gap between man and the lower animals in 

 sensitiveness to pain as there is in their intellectual and moral 

 faculties; and as a concomitant of those higher faculties. We 

 require to be more sensitive to pain because of our bare skin 

 with no protective armour or thick pads of hair to ward off 

 blows, or to guard against scratches and wounds from the many 

 spiny or prickly plants that abound in every part of the world ; 

 and especially on account of our long infancy and childhood. 

 And here I think I see the solution of a problem which has 

 long puzzled me — wJiy man lost his hairy covering, especially 

 from his back, where it would be so useful in carrying off 

 rain. He inaij have lost it, gradually, from the time when he 

 first became Man — the spiritual being, the 'Miving soul" in 

 a corporeal body, in order to render him 7nore se7isitivc. From 

 that moment he was destined to the intellectual advance which 

 we term civilisation. He was to be exposed to a thousand self- 

 created dangers totally unknown to the rest of the animal world. 

 His very earliest advance towards civilisation — the use of fire 

 — became thenceforth a daily and liourlv danger to him, to be 

 guarded against only by sudden and acute pain ; and as he 

 advanced onwards and his life became more complex; as he 

 surrounded himself with dwellings, and made clothing and 



1 See a brief discussion «>f tliis snl»jc<'t in my Darwinism, i>]>. :^()-40. 



