06 - Chapter 06
67 CHAP. VI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. A Separate objection to the doctrine that God is Love has been deduced from the physical sufferings experienced by the inferior orders of animal existence upon the earth. " Man," exclaims the objector, " Man, according to your statement, has sinned and is punished ; and you justify his punishment as merited by his guilt. But what say you to the lot of the innumerable millions of millions of the classes which you term irrational in animated life ? How will you attempt to reconcile with your doctrine the pains endured by the beast, by the bird, by the fish, by the insect, by the very zoophyte in its atom of incipient sensation? How, on your principle, will you vindicate the ordained system, general, nay almost universal, throughout those various tribes, that they are to be from day to day sustained in existence by mutually preying one upon another; by the ceaseless infliction, on the part of the stronger upon the weaker, of terror, anguish, and death ? Will you pretend that these beings have sinned; that their sufferings are penal retribution? Prove the sufferings consistent, if you are able, with justice. Dream not of their compatibility with love."
Whatever may be the compatibility, or the incompatibility with justice or with love, points remaining for examination, of the distresses and pains which pervade the ranks of animated nature subordinate to man; the cause of all those sufferings is incontrovertible. All had their origin in human transgression. When the Great Author of the world, at the close of successive days in the progress of creation, surveyed that which He had made; He testified that all was excellence, without blemish, without spot. When He had said, Let there be light and there was light; God saw the light, and it was good.1 When he had formed the firmament, and had collected the dry land, and had gathered the seas into their place; God saw that it was good.2 When he had clothed the earth with herbage, and with trees yielding fruit; God saw that it was good.3 [1] Genesis 1:3-4
[2] Genesis 1:9-10.
[3] Genesis 1:12. When lie had formed the sun, and the moon and the stars, and had stationed them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; God saw that it was good.J When he had replenished the waters and the air with living creatures severally adapted to the element which they were appointed to occupy: God saw that it was good; and God blessed them.2 When He had made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their hind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind ; God saw that it was good.3 And how were these countless multitudes to be sustained? Not by blood, not by mutual warfare, not by the infliction of pain. All were to be supported, like man their lord, by the vegetable productions of the earth. And God said, unto the human pair, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree, yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the [1] Genesis 1:14-18.
[2] Genesis 1:20-22.
[3] Genesis 1:25. earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat. And it was so.1 The food assigned to the animal inhabitants of the waters is not specified: from analogy, however, we cannot but infer that they were to be nourished by means of subaqueous vegetation. The work of creation being now completed, the Almighty Maker of all things contemplated every part of his work. God saw every thing that he had made: and behold, it was very good.’1 All was perfect in its kind, and for its purpose. All was unbroken peace, unsullied excellence, uninterrupted happiness.
Thus it was in Paradise. Thus, had man retained his abode in Paradise, it would have now been over the whole earth. But when man transgressed, and like the Angels who sinned, kept not his first estate ; not only was the ground cursed for his sake3, but the animal inhabitants of the earth, of the air, and of the waters, experienced a momentous change in their condition, extensive privations, and a [1] Genesis 1:29-30.
[2] Genesis 1:31
[3] Genesis 3:17. very large accession of unknown difficulties and sorrows. Though they had not partaken with man in sin, they became subjected through the sin of man to physical sufferings, similar in kind to those which were entailed upon man : to the severity of hunger and thirst, to bodily diseases and infirmities, to pain and danger in the production of their offspring, to laborious exertions in the search for food, to mutual hostility and devastation. I do not add that they become also subjected, by human transgression, to death; because the Scripture contains no intimation that they were originally designed for a perpetuity of existence. Another part of their change of position consisted in the arrangement ordained very generally respecting them, that the life of each individval should be supported by preying upon the lives of others. Of the precise time when this new appointment commenced, we are ignorant. But perhaps we may not unreasonably suppose that it did not precede the deluge. For it was not until the waters of the flood were dried up, that God, addressing Noah and his sons as the representatives of the future generations of mankind, said unto them, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb have I given you all things. 1 From that time forward we may literally apply to the condition of the animal world the declaration of the Apostle : We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now? That a removal or a very great mitigation of the existing state of animal suffering shall take place upon the earth, and during a period of long continuance before the end of the world, is an expectation which appears to be countenanced by the word of God. Prophet after prophet announces that, during the millenium, when the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ3, most important ameliorations shall ensue to the temporal happiness of men. Expressions and passages of figurative and allegorical import, and referring, under the veil of earthly images, to things spiritual, are to be found in these predictions. But various declarations are specific as to the extinction of calamities most widely affecting the tranquillity and the comfort of in- [1] Genesis 9:3.
[2] Horn. 8:22.
[3] Revelation 11:15. dividuals and of society. War shall not be known. They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his figtree, and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp : and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.1 Is it unreasonable to anticipate, with respect to such a season, a completion more or less literal of the accompanying predictions : The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the failing together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed: their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the oo;.’2 Is it unreasonable to anticipate that the whole animal world shall partake [1] Isaiah 2:4. Micah 4:3-4
[
First. The precluding of men from the advantage, which experience proves to be invaluable, of animal service and labour.
Secondly. The inordinate and unchecked multiplication of all the different species of animal life. When God promised to the Israelites that he would destroy before them the nations inhabiting Canaan, He said, I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and thebeastof the jieldmultiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee.1 "What then would have been by this time the multiplication of the beasts of the field against man ; what the multiplication against him of all the other animal tribes, if their increase had not been perpetually encountered by their appointed habits of preying one upon another ? The beasts of the field would have occupied the earth. The air would have been unfitted for respiration by swarms, become infinite, of insects. Under the existing system, the numbers of the beasts of the field are kept, one race by another, within bounds. The birds clear and purify the atmosphere. Man finds constant assistance from among the ranks of his enemies.2 [1] Exodus 23:29-30.
« Mr. Waterton, Essays, 2d. edit. p. 213., speaking of the ravages committed by the rat, observes that man, by his own efforts, with " the assistance which he receives We proceed with the objector to the subject of Justice.
If a being be created and so stationed that, unless it be through its own wilful fault, it will derive from its existence a larger amount of pleasure than of pain ; no complaint on account of that being can be urged against the divine justice. So far we are able to study the modes of animal existence, to discern the habits of the different sentient classes, and to appreciate the measures of happiness and of suffering assigned to these various beings; we have no grounds for concluding that there lives a single animal to whom existence is not on the whole a blessing. On the contrary, we are authorised by the observation which we are capable of exercising, to cherish the additional conviction that generally, or universally, the balance, in the case of each individual, greatly preponderates on the side of happiness. Concerning that which is unknown, we must judge from that which is known. With regard to fishes, and from his auxiliaries, the cat, the dog, the owl, the weasel, the ferret, and the foumart, is enabled in some degree to thin its numbers and to check its depredations." To this band of allies] might be added the kite, the fox, and the stoat, other tribes concealed in their subaqueous habitations from our notice ; and respecting those terrestrial classes which, through the minuteness of their size, or the obscurity or inaccessibility of their abodes, elude our research, we may fairly assume that the proportion of pleasure and of pain experienced by individual beings is analogous to that which, in the forms of animal life open to our notice, we have ampler means of estimating. It appears then to be the law of Providence, concerning the animal world, that the portion of time passed in pain by an individual being shall be very far less than that which is spent in comfort and enjoyment; and that pain when acute shall be of brief continuance ; and, whether acute or moderate, shall not bear, in its collective amount, a comparison with the happiness which that being has received. A lark is chased by a hawk, and after various evolutions is overtaken, seized, and killed by its pursuer. You saw its terror ; you heard its outcries; you witnessed its struggles and its destruction. Yet for each of those minutes of terror and of anguish how many days had it previously experienced of quiet enjoyment of food and freedom, in the fields of corn, on the sunny downs, and in the grassy enclosure: how many mornings, and noons, and evenings, of rapture, in looking down upon its mate and its young, and pouring forth its song in the skies! In computing the sufferings of animals, we are apt to mislead our judgement by inferences deduced from our own mental constitution. We attribute human perceptions to the animal, and satisfy ourselves that it will suffer in any given situation as we should suffer under similar circumstances. No basis of reasoning is less accordant with facts: no conclusion can be more fallacious. Be it assumed that an animal when severely wounded, or when violently deprived of life, feels the torture as keen as it would be to a man. The real fact is certainly not so in the lower tribes of animal existence. They often seem to bear with little suffering inflictions which would be fatal or agonising to men. An insect will leave some of its limbs in the hand of the captor, and fly away apparently as before. Of a wasp, if cut in two, the fore-part, consisting of the head, the wings, and the legs, will for some time continue to move about with rapidity. If a worm be divided by a spade into two portions, one of them, perhaps each, will become a perfect animal. If a polype be divided into many portions, each will grow into a living being similar to the original whole. But let the assumption be made. Still it would be too much to say that the animal always, or commonly, suffers equally with the man. The suffering of the animal is simply the present bodily pain. The corresponding bodily pain in the man is very frequently and grievously aggravated by mental anguish resulting from his apprehension or his foresight of consequences likely to ensue to others or to himself from his disabled state, or from his death. But with respect to the mass of ordinary suffering the difference is still greater in favour of the animal. The animal does not look forward. It anticipates not evil to come. It feels the sufferings of the moment; but thinks not of their continuance,— of their effects — of their recurrence. It feels, like a man, an internal throb : the throb is past, and speedily forgotten. The man knows that in his own case the throb may be the token of an inward malady which will harass him with torture through life. The bushes in which a bird found its shelter and its food are cut down: it flies to a neighbouring thicket, and perceives the shelter as refreshing, and the food as abundant. A man driven from his settled dwelling, and from his established means of occupation and subsistence, sees or dreads that all his prospects are blighted beyond the possibility of recovery. The alarm which animals exhibit on the approach or under the suspicion of danger is, in a very large majority of instances, rather an instinctive caution than a painful fear. A hare feeding in a meadow hears a noise, or notices a peasant, and darts away with the rapidity of an. arrow: but as soon as she has crossed the field, and has crept through the hedge into the adjoining enclosure, she begins to crop the herbage as before. You mark a butterfly sitting on a flower, and advance your ringer. The insect is gone : it is drinking the juice from another flower half a yard from the former. In another particular, also, our views of the condition of animals, as to suffering, are liable to be erroneous. Pain discloses itself by outward manifestations which forcibly attract attention, by gestures, looks, and sounds of distress. Pleasure in most animals is ordinarily of a tranquil nature, and wins little notice. A cow stung by a gadbee, or hearing but its distant hum, gallops round the pastures as though she were frantic : separated from her calf, or from her old companions, she fills the air with her lowings. But when she is feeding unmolested in the field, or quietly recumbent in rumination, the signs of her satisfaction are feeble in comparison with the demonstration of inquietude exhibited in the seasons of her discontent. Who can doubt, at the close of her life that she has reaped, during all her years of tranquillity, an amount of gratification abundantly overbalancing her incidental perturbations and ailments, inclusive of the sudden and short pang of death in a slaughterhouse ? Even the ass and the post-horse, the animals to which our thoughts naturally turn when we speak of sufferings inflicted on irrational creatures by the selfishness of unfeeling men ; even these examples and victims of evil treatment have enjoyed, during the progress of youth, years unconscious of the burthen and the scourge ; enjoyment laid up in store and noted down in the account-book of Justice to meet the subsequent troubles of mature and declining life. And those troubles, frequently interrupted by long intermissions of hard labour, are also met habitually throughout the period of their prevalence by the positive comforts experienced in the constant recurrence of customary food and rest. Had these arguments under the head of justice appeared inconclusive, there would have been found another in reserve to supply their defects. It must be acknowledged to be within possibility, that if the earthly existence of any given animal had not proved to it a positive benefit, the balance might be rectified by Omnipotence in the grant of a subsequent stage of being. The words of Holy Writ, though decisive against the moral responsibility of animals, might not of necessity forbid the idea of their surviving the stroke of death. I mean not to intimate an opinion that in any case they survive it. As little do I think the supposition necessary for the vindication of the divine justice. But did that attribute need a present vindication, the possibility to which I have alluded would furnish it. From the statement and considerations vindicating divine justice against objections which arraign the conduct of the Deity in subjecting the animal world to suffering, we are to proceed to shew that His conduct in that respect is not inconsistent with the proposition that God is Love. The free gift of an existence which is on the whole a blessing to the individual being is a proof of love in the giver.
If we have reason to believe that, to every animal which exists, life is on the whole a blessing ; we have in every animal which exists a proof of love on the part of God. That we have ample reason for the belief that, to every animal which exists, life is on the whole a blessing, is a truth which, as I apprehend, has been established in the present chapter. In every animal then which exists we have a proof of love on the part of God. In corroboration of this argument, reflect on the singular care, precision, and kindness with which Divine Providence has formed and adapted the bodily frame and organs of every animal to the element, the station, the locality, which it is intended to occupy. To produce illustrations is needless. Every creature possessed of life and known to man is an example ; and by parity of inference, includes all living creatures unknown to him. The observation extends to their several faculties. In the lower gradations of animal life, instinct may be the sole guide of the individual. In the higher classes, of whose habits and proceedings we have opportunities of taking cognisance, the power of reasoning, in different proportions and within certain limits, is unequivocally manifested. Let not human pride take alarm at the assertion. Let not the earthly head of the globe vauntingly and ignorantly exclaim, " All the tribes of living beings over which I am constituted the head are governed solely by the blind though sufficient impulse of instinct. I possess, I alone possess, reason. The exclusive possession of reason is my discrimination, my characteristic." Reason is not the exclusive possession of man. By the common Creator of man, and of all beings dwelling upon the earth, it is bestowed on various classes in a measure proportioned and adapted to their respective necessities.1 On man it is bestowed
1 Any accredited work entering in detail into the habits of animals will confirm the fact. I quote, as follows,from Studies in Natural History, by William Rhine], 2d edit. Edinburgh, pp. 165, 166. "A German artist, a man of strict veracity, states that, in his journey through Italy, he was an eye-witness to the following occurrence. He in a measure of strength, of comprehensiveness, of diversity of application, incalculably surpassing that in which it is conferred on the animal world. But reason in a superior degree is not the characteristical discrimination separating man from the animal world. What is the characteristical discrimination ? It is, that no being in the animal world is endowed with any faculty of religious perception, with any capability of knowing that there is a God. Man is born to know, to adore, to serve, and to love God. Thus saith the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, but let him observed a species of beetle busily engaged in making for its egg a pellet of dung, which, when finished, it rolled to the summit of a small hillock, and repeatedly suffered to tumble down its side, apparently for the sake of consolidating it by the earth which each time adhered to it. During this process the pellet unluckily fell into an adjoining hole, out of which all the efforts of the beetle to extricate it were in vain. After several ineffectual trials, the insect repaired to an adjoining heap of dung, and soon returned with three of its companions. All four now applied their united strength to the pellet, and at length succeeded in pushing it out; which being done, the three assistant beetles left the spot, and returned to their own quarters." Mr. Rhind proceeds to relate a similar and equally conclusive circumstance, seen by himself, on the part of a beetle. If the beetle gives such evidence, what would be the testimony advanced by the horse, the fox, the dog, the elephant? that glorieth glory in this; that he under- standeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord.[1] If then we are satisfied that in every animal which exists we have a proof of love on the part of God, let us pause to contemplate the immeasurable and inconceivable aggregate of proofs of his love, thus furnished in the animal creation. A brief phrase disposes of the largest quantities. Hence it may arise that we converse respecting immense numbers without having on the mind an adequate impression of their amount. The number of individuals of the human race now living on the earth is supposed to reach eight hundred millions. " A vast population !" we exclaim. Perhaps we shall have a stronger conception of its vastness if we attend to the following fact, which the multiplication table will speedily verify : that if a person would count this whole number one by one, advancing at the rate of sixty units in a minute, and pursuing his task regularly during eight hours every successive day; the time requisite for completing the sum would exceed seventy-six years. But what is the proportion of the human inhabitants of the globe to the [1] Jeremiah 9:23-24. other animated tribes ? It is as one to infinity. When we attempt to compute the numbers of these existences, language and imagination at once sink beneath the effort. Go to the nearest pasture overspread with ant hillocks, and tell how many millions of that single race are reposing in those receptacles. Observe on a summer evening the cloud of gnats incumbent over half an acre of marsh; and tell the millionth part of their numbers. Hear Linnaeus striving to express his astonishment, in departing from Lapland, at the continuity of the migrating armies of water fowl which covered, during eight succeeding days and nights, the surface of the river Calix. Survey the annual host of herrings approaching the isles of Shetland. " Its breadth and its depth are such as to alter the appearance of the very ocean. It is divided into distinct columns of five or six miles in length, and three or four in breadth.[1] See the sky curtained by locusts. View the living inundation of the lemings. Expose to a powerful microscope a solitary drop of water, and try to enumerate the active animalcula which it includes. When you have pondered
[1] Pennant’s British Zoology, 1776, vol.iii. pp. 336, 337. on these few and slight specimens of an interminable series of similar illustrations, represent to yourself a computer counting at the rate of sixty units in a minute, and enabled to prosecute his labour during the four and twenty hours of each succeeding day; and ask yourself how many thousands, how many myriads, of years would be occupied in thus approximating towards the sum. of individual beings of the animal creation at this moment existing in the earth, in the air, and in the waters. Every one of these existences is a living proof of love on the part of God. Have not we in this stupendous survey most powerful attestations that God is Love ?
"The proof," it will be replied, " is incomplete. Why is not the measure of happiness bestowed without the accompaniments and drawbacks of pain? To evince that God is Love, the happiness ought to be unsullied." Not necessarily. Not if the present measure of qualified happiness be as large a gift to the irrational creation as can be bestowed, consistently with the amplest and wisest manifestation of love to the universe. Never are we to forget that the earth forms an extremely small portion of the illimitable dominions of the Most High. Nor are we ever to forget that we have scriptural evidence for the conclusion that the events which take place upon this globe, and the scheme of divine administration displayed in this little, province of his empire, as connected with human transgression and its consequences, are objects of the most earnest inspection, of the warmest interest, and of the most important instruction, to other ranks of intelligent beings. Is it possible for us, in our contracted sphere, and amid our short-sighted ignorance, to affirm that the subsisting amount of animal suffering resulting from the fall of man, and the very modes in which the suffering takes place (although, if the amount of pain be definite, the mode can offer no just ground of objection), may not be arrangements conducive to purposes of universal good ? May not they be arrangements which, at the same time that they are entirely accordant, as already has been shewn, both with justice and with love to the animal creation subjected to them, are physically and morally adapted to the condition of man as a sinner ? And both to man himself, whose guilt introduced them, and also to unseen worlds, may not they be most salutary exemplifications of hateful and widely diffused effects of sin? May they not thus be among the means selected by wisdom which cannot err for the production of the largest amount of ultimate happiness; and be in themselves among the proofs that God is Love ?