The World of the Poets . 
749 
1880.] 
Granting, for argument’s sake, this undemonstrated propo- 
sition, we may still doubt whether a considerable portion of 
the animal world do not share this unconsciousness. Fur- 
ther, so long as beautiful objefts are destroyed, and we are 
conscious of such destru&ion, we cannot help experiencing 
regret, whether the beings that thus perish are sensitive or 
apathetic. . 
This elimination of the Carnivora, or rather the continued 
existence of the Herbivora, is also out of all harmony with 
the notion of deathless flowers. To what good end is the 
rose or the lily to be exempt from spontaneous withering, if 
it is still liable to be destroyed by beasts ? 
Some dreamers have gone a step further, and have ba- 
nished from their ideal worlds all animals save man only, 
who is to be the sole spectator and enjoyer of the flora of 
the golden age. Even, however, if we overlook the im- 
portant part which many inseCts play in the fructification of 
flowers, it seems to us that woods and gardens without birds 
and bees and butterflies would strike us as dead and dieary. 
We should miss the chirping and the warbling up among 
the branches, and the mellow hum over the flowei-beds, and 
the glance of many-tinted wings in the sunlight ; and the 
moment we restore these welcome sights and sounds the 
old game of eating and being eaten re-commences, save 
indeed on one supposition, which has not, we believe, found 
its way into imaginative literature. A world is conceivable 
where both animals and plants should draw; their support 
direCtly from inorganic matter without preying upon each 
other. Whether such a world exists, or ever will exist, are 
Questions beyond our reach. It would be no inconsiderable 
step in that direction if synthetic chemistry, which even 
now gives us alizarine without the aid of the madder-plant, 
should some day succeed in producing starch, sugars,, oils, 
albumen, casein direCt from their elements without the inter- 
vention of animal or vegetable life at all. Strange to say 
this harmless suggestion, having been once brought forward 
in conversation by a friend of the writer s, was denounced 
bv a reverend gentleman present as “revolting blasphemy.” 
Another feature of the “ better world ” is immortality. 
Sometimes men alone, but more commonly all creatures, 
are described as exempt from the pains and the bereave- 
ments of death. But the poets have forgot one important 
condition. In their deathless world reproduction is still 
assumed. The plants are still to flower and to fruCtify. 
The animals, from “the small gilded fly” up to man, are 
still regarded as sexual. 
