stance, from the presence in the body of parasites that slowly eat out the life. Instances innumerable come to mind as one remembers the scientific work of entomologists who pit one species of insect against another to rid us of our orchard pests. Is there suffering here? A tiny creature lays its eggs in the body of a larva which has been safely (?) housed away in its cocoon; and when the time arrives for the larva to come forth a

butterfly, nothing appears. The rightful occupant of the little house has entirely disappeared-eaten up alive, in naked literalness, to furnish food for some other creature's babies. The cocoon is empty, or has perhaps been taken possession of as a readymade residence by the creatures that have cannibalized its rightful owner. Now, not to speak of the question of the morality of this high-handed performance-a question which would certainly arise to embarrass the second comers if they were human-does the original cocoon-dweller, the dispossessed and eaten-up larva, suffer physically as would a human being under like circumstances?

My mind vaguely worked over this question for months and years, till one day I fell on the ice and was aroused to the reality and decided quality of human suffering, at any rate. As the long days of convalescence came, my nurse, an exceedingly bright and observing young woman, told me of an experience she once had with a big Swede during her hospital training. It shed much light on my problem. I give the account in her words as nearly as I can remember.

"It was in my last year of training," she said, "and I was in charge of the men's surgical ward. One night there was brought in a big fellow with one leg terribly injured-he had fallen under the wheels of a freight car. The interns said it was a perfectly clear casethe leg must come off. No need of calling the surgeon on duty-the surgeons come only in the daytime, you know, except in emergencies. The leg was pretty well ground off, anyway, and the operation would be simple. But the man got wind of what they were about to do, and objected so strongly to the loss of his leg that he finally won. They decided they would wait till Dr. Morsch came in the morning. But when he came, his verdict was the same-there was no hope whatever for the leg, and hope for the man's life only by amputation. But the big fellow pleaded desperately; demanded to be taken. back to his home-he had no home but a

boarding-house, and we knew he would have no chance at all there-begged and cried and protested and swore he'd much rather die than lose his leg. I never heard anything so pitiful. It was mental agony. Finally, the doctors impatiently bundled him back to the ward-they had had him already on the operating-table-telling him he had only a day or so unless he listened to reason. I'll never forget how he looked as they brought him back -the happiest man alive! And, to the astonishment of everybody, the complications the doctors had prognosticated didn't occur, and the leg began to mend. It was really the growing of a new leg-of at least some six inches of one. I never saw anything so interesting as the pushing out of the spicules of bone from each broken end, like the formation of ice crystals on freezing water. The fellow was a marvel in the way he endured the pain. I never once heard him groan, and after he got so he could sit up and watch the dressing of the fracture he was as interested as any of us. It was a star case, reported in all the medical journals. He talked very little English, and his one refrain was: 'It iss mos' vell-see? I haf told you jus' so !'

"The greatest difficulty we had with our Big Ben was to keep him quiet. He would move his leg whenever the fancy struck him, even though the least movement drove those spicules of bone into the flesh, and sometimes fairly through the skin. I asked him one day if it didn't hurt him, and he grunted assent, but the hurt was not bad enough to keep him from doing it again and again. Oh, yes, it was in splints, of course, but in some way he'd twist it loose. We finally had to bind the whole leg fast to the iron bedstead, and then the man got well. He left the hospital the happiest man walked on two legs."

that ever

I thought of my own broken bone, and could not imagine what discomfort of confined position could make a human being twist a broken leg out of the splints. And never groan! I-I had raised the roof, and hadn't been ashamed of it, either.

Then I remembered the turtle and the bear. And here was a human being who seemed to suffer little. Could there be a difference in nerve quality even among human beings? The big Swede's nerves were certainly different from mine. And if a man, because of a not highly organized nervous system, a warm-blooded human being, suffers

comparatively little, how much less still a cold-blooded creature?

My nurse and I talked at length about the matter, and she gave me another incidentthis one, however, about a chicken, not a man. She was visiting a friend, a farmer's daughter, one summer, and a chicken that had been badly wounded on a barbed wire fence was brought into the house. Half in fun, Miss Frank volunteered to act as surgeon in the case, and sewed up the cut in the most approved aseptic style. ("My patient made a good recovery, too," she boasted.) "When the stitches were going in, the little thing squawked till I was very uncomfortable," she said. "You know I'm accustomed to ether. But it couldn't have really hurt her very much, for before the last thread was tied that little hen was gormandizing on some shelled corn that my pitying friend brought her. How we laughed ! She wasn't very hungry either-Mr. Hall's chickens were always well fed."

But the thought still haunted me that from fear, at least, animals must suffer acutely. They certainly act as if they did. The rabbit, for instance, that does not make even a pretense of fighting, but trusts altogether to its legs, and its abbreviated tail, which does not afford a place for the seizing teeth of its pursuer in the event of a close run-the rabbit certainly acts as if it had a knowledge that all rabbits are eaten in the end, and that its turn may come any minute. An instinctive knowledge, if one prefers to call it that, but a very real and terrifying one. And the poor little field-mouse-perhaps the most timid thing in the world. The hawk watches for him by day and the owl by night. The fox esteems him a dainty morsel. The bloodthirsty weasel can smell him over long trails, and even the bear does not disdain to claw over a stone hoping to find a choice bit of mouse meat for dessert. No wonder the timid creature trembles and flutters and acts as if he were dying with fright every time he ventures from his nest under a mossy stone. It seems like a real fear-a fear that "hath torment "-Fear as we understand the word. And if it is, how is it possible for the tiny creature to have any good times at all the "good times" that we intuitively feel are the rightful heritage of all God's creatures?

But here again we are surely reading into the actions of animals the impossible-to them-motives that lie behind similar actions in a being with high reasoning powers.

The

psychology of the lower animals is a science yet in its infancy, but so far as it has advanced it has not strengthened our belief in the ability of these animals to generalize or to perform any of the higher functions of reason. Even when animals have been led by instinct to actions similar to those which in man have been arrived at by reason-though, in the last analysis, a greater part of our life than we think is instinctive, reason only confirming its judgments-there cannot be con nected with them the keen and high sensibilities of the human being. The one danger threatening rabbit and mouse is, in a word, Death-death, or the fear of it, which causes by far the greater part of the sufferings of the human kind. But rabbit and mouse cannot possibly know anything about deathhow can they fear it?

But what of the conflicts among animals? The terrible tension of battle, the agony of the struggle to the death—a real struggle to extremis even though animals may not know what death is? The answer to this question came to me also in the experience of another, a modest young giant of an itinerant Methodist minister in the West, who traveled more than a thousand miles on foot one year, and who met with many "wild beasts at Ephesus" and wilder men in Montana. I heard him tell the story last winter. I give it also in his own words as well as I can recall them :

66

"I remember still how cold it was at three, o'clock that Saturday morning," he said. though I am used to cold weather. The train did not stop at Swanscott, where I lived, and I had five miles to walk to catch the five o'clock morning express-the latest train that would get me to Little Wolf in time for my Sunday work. I kissed my wife good-by, stole a glance at my sleeping babies, and trudged out into the cold-when I struck town I learned that it was forty-four degrees below zero. But my coat was heavy and I pulled my woolen cap well down over my face, for every inch of skin that was uncovered felt as if invisible fingers were pinching it. Ever feel the cold like that? It isn't bad after one gets used to it. I am a perfectly well man and I am used to it. I enjoy it. track, the nearest

"I went by the railway way and the best walking. The keen air in my lungs was almost intoxicating in quality, and I felt like a king as I tramped along. There was no moon, but the stars were glorious, and their light, reflected by the brilliantly white snow, gave light enough for my way.

There was not a particle of wind, and the stillness was wonderful. The only sound I could hear was the crunch of the dry snow under my shoes.

"I had gone about half the way when I came to a place where the railway crept unusually close to the sandy cliff or bluff along the side of which it was built. As I was walking along this stretch with steady, swinging steps, something-some angel of a primeval instinct, some sound so slight that it reached my attentive animal ears only, not my brain-made me glance hastily up, and I jerked myself back just in time to escape being hit by a large body flying in front of me. I distinctly felt the rush of air as the creature passed. I knew at once that it was a mountain lion that had jumped at me from the cliff. Missing me, it hit the earth the other side of the track, and I could hear it scramble along the ground as it tried to save itself from going down the hill.

In an

We

"I was terribly frightened. I ran. I ran very fast. Did you ever feel the hair rise prickling with terror all over your head? I did then. It seemed to me it would lift my cap-queer how one thinks of trivial things at such a time. If ever a man took ten feet at a jump in running, I did then. I knew the beast would be after me again, and, sure enough, in a little while I heard his steps behind me. Then I could hear him pantingno doubt he heard me panting, too. agony of terror, it came to me that I must face him or die, and, without reasoning, I obeyed the impulse and suddenly wheeled about. The lion stopped, too, both of them— for I saw now that there were two-as soon as they could control their momentum. glared at each other motionless for a minute. I saw I must fight, and I was ready. I raised my hand very slowly and buttoned my coat collar tight about my neck-they always jump for the throat, you know. Then, with still a passing thought of escape, I began taking long, slow steps backward, my eyes still fixed on my foes. But when I moved they moved too, slowly creeping toward me. For every step I took they took two. So I stopped again, choosing a place where the ground was level and the footing sure. This time the lions did not stop when I did, but, as I expected, came creeping on, the larger one ahead. I could see in the starlight their crouching forms back of the eyes that glowed like literal balls of fire in the darkness. I had no weapon, nothing but my little leather

satchel. That was packed solid, however, and I lifted it slowly above my head, intending to strike with it at the first one that jumped. My plan of defense was perfectly definite. My shoes were heavy, and I had kicked football in my college days. It came into my mind in another odd flash of inconsequent memory how little I knew what I was really training for in the old football team.

"The situation was, to say the least, interesting, and every detail is burned into my memory. Once before in my life I had been in danger from wild beasts-attacked by a bear, or rather chased by one. Then I had the help of a dog-noble fellow, his life went to save mine but this time I was thrown entirely on my own resources, and they could fairly be pronounced rather slender. Yet I was not afraid. That was the most interesting part of it all-my feelings. I remember them perfectly. I have often recalled them, and have used them sometimes in my sermons to illustrate a psychological point. When I was running I was afraid-horribly, miserably afraid. But as I faced the lions every particle of fear left me, and I flashed into an exalted state of mind and body that was, I think, courage in the highest degree. I did not dread the moment of conflict. I waited it with intense eagerness, just as we wait sometimes for the end of an exciting story. Every ounce of my body was alertly ready. I never in my life felt so big and so alive-so entirely confident. I suppose psychologists would say that I was no longer a man, that I had dropped back into a purely animal condition-the condition of a creature that had had thousands of experiences of conflicts through myself and my savage ancestors, and had always come off victorious. Yet with these purely animal sensations and impulses I used my human reason in planning my course. Moreover, I had a wonderful spiritual quickening—a kind of clearing away of sense barriers between me and God. My soul flashed out to him in intimate contact. I was exultingly sure that he was with me and that he would help me. I know now, of course, that I hadn't a ghost of a chance with the beasts. A single mountain lion is altogether too much for an unarmed man-I hadn't even a penknife-and here were two ferocious creatures famished by the long Montana winter! Yet I was perfectly confident- sure I should win in the conflict.

"The foremost lion was on his belly crawling toward me an inch at a time. The big muscles on his haunches knotted themselves for

the spring. But at what seemed the very last moment there was a tremendous whistle that seemed, in the clear air, to sound in our very ears, and a freight train came booming around a slight curve in the road, the headlight glaring full into the faces of the beasts. They turned and bounded up the sides of the cliff, screeching at every jump. They had been as silent as death before, but now ! I never heard such blood-curdling yells. My fear all came back. My hair came up again, prickling all over my head, and again I turned and ran. I had another little bluff to pass, and I was horribly afraid the big cats would be waiting for me there, but they were not. And so I am here to tell the story.'

The story so modestly told had for me an interest beyond that of the man's almost miraculous escape. It answered a lingering question in my problem concerning the suffering of animals. It made me understand that even conflict may be a joy among the lower animals, no anxiety about the outcome being possible with them. May it not be comparable to the satisfaction a man gets in hard physical exercise? Children will run as lambs gambol when there is no reason for the running save the pure "fun of it."

And such further research as one who is not an expert may give confirms me in my belief. Especially the fact of which physiologists assure us, that much of the muscular contraction of dying animals-the highest animal of all not excepted-which so distresses those who witness it, is entirely involuntary. It goes no farther back than the muscles themselves-certainly not to the sentient brain. An absolutely headless (or beheaded) creature, and so a brainless creature, for most animals wear their brains in their heads, will respond to muscular irritation.

Domestic animals? They doubtless suffer more. Sometimes by diseases superinduced by their limited freedom and artificial environments, sometimes from the direct carelessness and brutality of man. Paul's "whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain," it is true, but it is "together" with man-as man has touched it. Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals have a legitimate place in our civilization.

But in the interest of common sense and sanity and mental comfort-yes, and in the interest of "going fishing" for relaxation or "swatting flies" for sanitary protection— let us disabuse our minds of the sentimental notion that the lower animal possesses the possibilities of acute feeling, either for pleasure or pain, which is the terrible but precious heritage of his human relative. The world of the lower animals is a joyous one. Knowing nothing of anxiety or regret or remorse, untouched by any fear for the future, and especially by any fear of death, that sinister event around which so large a proportion of human woe centers, wild animals feel to the full-that is, to their "full" the "wild joy of living." They enjoy many things— air, water, the relaxation that comes with sunshine, the invigoration of the frost, their food, the company of their fellows in sex and rudimentary social relations, the exhilarating pursuit of their prey, flight and escape from their enemies, and even fierce conflict when it comes. Death, when it really comes to them, is usually quick and comparatively painless, not at all like the death of human beings, which is often preceded by long illness and accompanied by long-drawn-out physical and mental distress. Animals suffer very little. Nature is kind, Tennyson and Fiske to the contrary notwithstanding.