truggle for existence
which has made earth, air, and sea one mighty battle-ground. In this
we are again letting the fallacy of number take hold of us. There can
be no aggregate of suffering among lower, any more than among higher,
organisms; and the amount of pain which individual animals have to
endure--even animals of those species which we can suppose to possess
a certain keenness of sensibility--is probably, in the vast majority
of cases, very trifling. Half the anguish of humanity proceeds from
the power of looking before and after. The animal, though he may
suffer from fear of imminent, visible danger, cannot know the torture
of long-drawn apprehension. For most of his life he is probably aware
of a vague well-being; then of a longer or shorter--often a very
short--spell of vague ill-being; and so, the end. Nor is it possible
to doubt that the experience of some animals includes a great deal of
positive rapture. If the lark be not really the soul of joy, he is the
greatest hypocrite under the sun. Many insects seem to be pin-points
of vibrant vitality which we can scarcely believe to be unaccompanied
by pleasurable sensation. The mosquito which I squash on the back of
my hand, and which dies in a bath of my own blood, has had a short
life but doubtless a merry one. The moths which, in a tropic night,
lie in calcined heaps around the lamp, have probably perished in
pursuit of some ecstatic illusion. It does not seem, on the whole,
that we need expend much pity on the brute creation, or make its
destinies a reproach to the great Artificer. Which is not to say, of
course, that we ought not to detest and try with all our might to
abolish the cruelties of labor, commerce, sport and war.

Again, as to the great calamities--the earthquakes, shipwrecks,
railway accidents, even the wars--which are often made a leading count
in the arraignment of the Author of Sentience, we must not let
ourselves be deceived by the fallacy of number. Their spectacular,
dramatic aspect naturally attracts attention; but the death-roll of a
great shipwreck is in fact scarcely more terrible than the daily bills
of mortality of a great city. It is true that a violent death,
overtaking a healthy man, is apt to involve moments, perhaps hours, of
acute distress which he might have escaped had he died of gradual
decay or of ordinary well-tended disease; and a very short space of
the agony sometimes attendant upon (say) a railway accident, probably