408 THE WOKLD OF LIFE 



adopted cookery as a daily practice, he became more and more 

 exposed to loss, to injury, and to death from fire, and thus 

 would be subject to the law of selection by which those less 

 sensitive to fire, and therefore more careless in the use of it, 

 became eliminated. 



Ilia tools continually becoming more and more dangerous, 

 and his weapons becoming more and more destructive, w^ere 

 alike a danger to him. The scythe and the sickle caused acci- 

 dental woimds, as did the needle and the knife. The club and 

 the axe, the spear and the arrow, the sword and the dagger, 

 caused wounds which, if not avoided, led quickly to death. 

 Hence beneficent pain increased with him as a warning of dan- 

 ger, impelling him to the avoidance of wounds by skill and 

 dexterity, by the use of padded clothing or of flexible armour; 

 w^hile nature's remedies were sought out to heal the less deadly 

 injuries, and thus avoid long suffering or permanent disable- 

 ment. And ever as civilisation went on, such dangers in- 

 creased. Explosives caused a new kind of wound from musket 

 or pistol, and later from bombs and mines. Boats and ships 

 were built and the ocean traversed. Endless forms of machin- 

 ery were invented, at first hand-worked, and not dangerous to 

 the worker, but soon driven by steam with such force that if 

 carelessly entangled in it the worker's limbs might be torn from 

 his body. And all this went on increasing till at last a large 

 proportion of the human race laboured daily in peril of life 

 or limb, or of painful wounds, or worse diseases. Against this 

 vast ever-present network of dangers, together with the ever- 

 present danger of consuming fire, man is warned and protected 

 by an ever-increasing sensibility to pain, a horror at the very 

 sight of wounds and blood ; and it is this specially developed sen- 

 sibility that we, most illogically, transfer to the animal-world 

 in our wholly exaggerated and often quite mistaken views as to 

 the crueltv of nature! 



As a proof of the increased sensibility of the civilised as 

 compared with the more savage races, we have the well-known 



