FOREST AND STREAM 
1097 
THE LAW OF SUBSISTENCE 
INEVITABLY IT DRAGS IN THE LAW 
OF PAIN —A SERMON ON BOTH 
By W. H. Bentley. 
Till one has actually entered into the realities 
of camp life—has tramped the great wood alone 
or with a cheerful guide; has pulled the trigger 
on a bounding deer only to see the small, white 
flag at its rear briskly wave a defiant farewell 
among the bushy firs, or perchance if the aim 
was true, dressed out the warm carcass and left 
it hanging on a bowed sapling to be brought in 
at a later date to grace the pole; has blazed away 
at a swiftly ambling bunch of black fur that, 
strangely enough only ambled out of sight with 
more celerity at the rifle’s crack; has heard the 
crash of a monarch moose tearing with resistless 
momentum through the alders, just out of sight; 
has lunched with genial companions met by ap¬ 
pointment about the noon-day fire, miles away 
from camp beside Roaring Brook or up the East 
Branch; has sat down at a table bountifully sup¬ 
plied with game, vegetables and pastry, at the 
end of a day’s long tramp, and, while serving 
the appetite sharpened to healthful keenness by 
the activities of the day, has stimulated diges¬ 
tion with the piquant sauce of friendly jest and 
stingless gibe—one cannot know camp life in its 
finer features. 
Furthermore, till one has joined the after- 
dinner group gathered in the “big room” in 
which, scattered about the great, open stove in 
restful attitudes, are kindred spirits whose hold 
on the comforting trivialities of earthly exist¬ 
ence are indicated by clouds of blue smoke rising 
above their heads; and while tireless guides with 
cleaning rod and oily rag are slicking up each 
well smoked rifle, has both told and heard of the 
moving incidents that the day brought forth; 
till one has been infected with the spirit of un¬ 
selfish comradeship and thoughtful solicitude that 
the atmosphere of camp life inherently exhales, 
and that levels caste, smothers incongruities of 
temperament and harmonizes religions—one has 
missed the essence of the. prevailing virtue there, 
that broadens a narrow mind, adds a benignancy 
and wholesomeness to daily conduct that were 
never before present, and last but not least, cures 
an ailing body and freshens a tired mind. 
That there may now and then be a hunter in 
the woods over whose crass and selfish nature 
the mystical charm of the atmosphere there, ap¬ 
parently fails to throw its gracious spell, I can¬ 
not well deny. The game laws allow a hunter 
to take hie game without an investigation of his 
motives. He may go out seeking his carcasses in 
the spirit in which he goes to the butcher’s stall 
for his steak or roast, and grumble if he does 
not easily obtain them. There is no law civil 
or criminal, prohibiting sordid and mean ambi¬ 
tion. If through a lack of moral sense a bounty 
of nature that the Almighty palpably intended 
for the reasonable use of mankind, is now and 
then basely and avariciously claimed without the 
slightest recognition of the beneficent, general 
principle in accordance with which it was be¬ 
stowed but of which it is only an insignificant il¬ 
lustration, I believe the instances of .such obliq¬ 
uity are growing fewer with the better sentiment 
of the times. 
“But,” interrogates one of my good friends, 
’“why shoot at all? Why not roam the woods; 
absorb the beauties of nature; study her wonder¬ 
ful laws; get from the beech ridges an inspira¬ 
tion of the Almighty’s wisdom, and from the 
pine groves their health-restoring virtues, if you 
please, without taking the life of a harmless crea¬ 
ture whose existence is as much God-given as 
yours? Why draw fine distinctions between the 
man who visits the woods solely to get a deer 
carcass, and the one—yourself—who in sheer 
hypocrisy prates of the love of nature and of the 
beneficence of the Almighty, but—who shoots 
his deer? Upon what authority do you stand, 
when you insist that back of the eye sighted along 
the deadly rifle barrel, there must be a mind com" 
mitted to a recognition of the beauty of nature 
before the trigger rightly may be pulled? The 
sleek naturalist shoots : Dead deer ! Hurrah ! 
The brawny butcher fires the fatal bullet: Dead 
deer! Alas ! What a shame ! 
Now let me understand you, my good friend. 
Since the days of Nimrod the Mighty before 
the Lord, and of Esau the Cunning, there have 
been many hunters. Am I to understand you en¬ 
tertain the idea that there is no warrant in re¬ 
ligious law or in the law of human necessity, for 
the destruction of innocent, animal life? No; 
that idea would be untenable, you admit: you do 
not take so broad a stand. Very well, then nar¬ 
row your strictures against my killing deer, down 
to their essence. 
“Cruel.” 
Anything else? 
“Unnecessary.” 
Go on. 
That is sufficient, you say. Now let me con¬ 
sider the first charge. 
You are a religious man in the general sense 
of the term? 
“Perhaps so; perhaps not.” 
But you are at least a deist and, therefore, a 
believer in a supreme being under whose direc¬ 
tion the universe was created? Consider you an 
atheist for time being? O, in that case our dis¬ 
cussion stops; for with nothing greater than 
mere accidental conditions with which to deal, 
I hold my arbitrary judgment on a matter of 
this kind as sound as yours, and discussion is 
not worth while. We merely then entertain dif¬ 
ferent views on a practice to which no status 
except that of human custom can be given; no 
authority except that of human expediency. 
Why drag in religion? Because in your stric¬ 
tures the religious view of the creation is clear¬ 
ly relied on. If you desire to re-draw them you 
may do so. They are to stand as they are then; 
but I am to admit there is nothing in the divine 
law that tolerates cruelty. I make the admission 
without hesitation or caviling. The dispute, then, 
practically narrows down to “What is cruelty?” 
An over-bold physiologist once said that if the 
designing of the eye had been left to him, he 
could have improved over that designed by the 
Almighty. Scarcely less egotistical was the as¬ 
sertion of a student under Dean Wayland, that 
the Proverbs of Solomon exhibited no evidences 
of remarkable intellectual superiority; to which 
the Dean rejoined: 
“Perhaps not. Suppose you write out a few 
yourself and bring them into the class room to¬ 
morrow.” 
Now, my friend, in the scheme of creation the 
physiological phenomenon of pain, for some good 
reason, was included. Physical pain is the nor¬ 
mal sequence to certain abnormal conditions of 
the body, resulting from injury or disease. Why 
pain rather than a pleasureable sensation was 
thus incorporated in the scheme of creation, is a 
matter beyond our present controversy. It is 
sufficient to note that it is inherently produced 
under the conditions mentioned. 
The operation of the law of pain nothing ani¬ 
mate can escape. Human agencies may allay and 
even entirely dissipate pain itself; but if there 
be a way by which the law that governs it may be 
nullified, human intelligence has not yet searched 
it out. On the young and old of the human race; 
on the just and the unjust; on the beasts of the 
field, fowls of the air and fishes of the sea, the 
inscrutable law inexorably and relentlessly works. 
Also included in the scheme of creation is the 
natural love of existence, over against which 
paradoxically stands the grim law of subsistence: 
the law of universal depredation, in accordance 
with which the lion devours the zebra; the hawk, 
the pigeon and the sparrow; the fox, the par¬ 
tridge and the rabbit, and the spider, the fly. 
Under the law, too, man drives to the shambles 
myriads of the beasts of the field, and takes 
from the sea his daily levy of fish; and all under 
a system so wondrously concomitant in even its 
minutest details and so marvellously intricate in 
its operations, that the human mind cannot in¬ 
telligently hope to fathom it. 
Inherently related are these two laws: the 
law of pain and the law of subsistence; but the 
conventionalities of society do not permit men¬ 
tion of their connection. At the family board 
we touch not on the details of the butcher’s art, 
lest tender nerves be wrung. In the banquet hall 
we flare upon the whitened screen no motion 
