BY WAY OF APPENDIX. 
215 
fighting, or courting, or incubating, however many 
days or weeks this process may last — in all things 
he is obeying the impulse that is strongest in him 
at the time, and there is no restraint. 
As to disease, it is so rare in wild animals, or in 
a large majority of cases so quickly proves fatal, 
that, compared with what we call disease in our 
own species, it is practically non-existent. The 
" struggle for existence," in so far as animals in a 
state of nature are concerned, is a metaphorical 
struggle ; and the strife, short and sharp, which is 
so common in nature, is not misery, although it 
results in pain, since it is pain that kills or is soon 
outlived. Fear there is, just as in fine weather 
there are clouds in the sky ; and just as the shadow 
of the cloud passes, so does fear pass from the wild 
creature when the object that excited it has 
vanished from sight. And when death comes, it 
comes unexpectedly, and is not the death that we 
know even before we taste of it, thinking of it 
with apprehension all our lives long, but a sudden 
blow that takes away consciousness — the touch of 
something that numbs the nerves — merely the 
prick of a needle. In whatever way the animal 
perishes, whether by violence, or excessive cold, or 
decay, his death is a comparatively easy one. So 
long as he is fighting with or struggling to escape 
from an enemy, wounds are not felt as wounds, 
