A. "RELIGION OF NAT1TRE." • if N N ATURE as we see it–from
the human pOint.of View_ appears intensely cruel and, therefore, incompatible with the theory of the existence of a merciful God. This has, indeed, been a great stumbling-block to many good men." The sentence occurs in the opening chapter of Mr. E. Kay Robinson's thoughtful series of essays, " The Religion of Nature," just published (Hodder and Stoughton, 3a. 6d. net). It is the summing up of a long argument addressed to him by one who signed himself "A. Freethinker," and who Wrote to Mr. Robinson that he had been struck by the " confident religious note" which seemed to run through his writing, and asked how he could reconcile the study of Nature with a belief in religion. What do you mean by cruelty ? ' Mr. Robinson, in effect, asks in reply. If you mean that what we should regard as horrible cruelty if it were practised on ourselves is an everyday, commonplace affair in Nature, I should grant your postulate. If, however, you mean that in the animal world there is a perpetually existent state of terrible unhappiness, I should deny that flatly. That un- happiness only exists in the minds of men. It is not felt by the animals. There is, in short, using the word "cruelty" in its accepted meaning, no " cruelty "' in Nature at all. There is, therefore, in the study of Nature no stumbling-block to religion ; rather, the more deeply a man studies Nature, the more deeply founded becomes his belief in the future of the human soul. His religion is, in fact, founded on the bed-rock of natural laws.'
Those are not Mr. Robinson's own words, but they sum up, as we understand it, his main contention. The first and the great difficulty in arguing on the matter is the use of words. All the words which we use in speaking about pain suffered by, or cruelty inflicted upon, animals, or terror felt by them, or happiness and unhappiness, are words expressing sensa- tions or states of existence experienced by man, not by animals. We have no word which exactly expresses what is meant by pain suffered by animals, because the words we use all relate to pain as suffered by human beings. The con- sequence is that in studying the laws governing the existence of pain in the lives of animals, the only words in which, so to speak, it is easy to think are words which to our human minds convey the notion of intense and prolonged suffering. The dor- beetle, clothed in armour which prevents him from touching the joints of his body or his limbs, is sucked dry at the joints by parasitic mites as a man might be slowly killed by clusters of rats. Small creatures such as young birds or mice are scared perhaps fifty times in twelve hours by hawks and owls : possibly the great majority of mice and rats die, a slow and violent death. The rabbit, relentlessly chased by the stoat or the weasel, rushes apparently wild with terror from burrow to burrow, or drawls slowly and heavily away, as if a nightmare of fright had turned its feet to lead. Out of a thousand may- flies rising from the carefully made caddis-houses on the stream-bed, perhaps half escape from the trout and the grayling, to dance up into sunlight peopled by hungry swifts and swallows : perhaps not a dozen live to mate and carry on the strange, lavish circle of existence. IS the circle rightly to be regarded as cruelty, or unhappiness, or waste ? If it is so regarded, that is due in a great part to the fact that a very large number of people are unable to look at the processes of existence among animals, their ways of -hunting for food, their methods of guarding and caring for their young, and their efforts at self-preservation, without perpetually comparing and correlating such processes with similar activities and sufferings in human life. They study the apparently extraordinarily intelligent habits of bees or wasps or ants, and think of beesi and wasps and ants as possessing mental faculties not differing in kind but only in degree from our own. They watch with infinite pleasure the tender care with which a pair of robins will tend their young; they listen with delight to charming stories of a doe's devotion to her fawns, and read no books more readily than those , which contain the so-called autobiographies of bears and lynxes,.and seals and rabbits and the rest,. in which the .animals are moved by the same emotions of affection and gratitude, and infer effects from causes with the same powers of logical reasoning as those which belong to men. Doubtless such stories have their own charm, and for children, who have to be taught pity, they are valuable reading. But nobody need be thought heartless or unable to appreciate the delight of fairy-tales if he argues that they misrepresent fact and are entirely opposed to the teaching of science. The wasp who with infinite pains makes a home for her maggot-child, and brings it fresh food with every evidence of motherly care, will continue to bring fresh food and to conceal the entrance of the cell if the maggot be removed. The parent robins who spend the long days of May and June in ceaseless waiting upon their fledglings are the same birds whose furious beaks drive their young out of the garden in winter. Yet is there anything more beautiful in the feeding of the young robins in obedience to the law of propagation of the race than in the driving of the young afield because the law does not allow more than a certain amount of space to a pair of grown robins ? If the law be viewed as a whole, there is nothing more wonderful in the apparent cruelty, essentially inhuman, of the one action than in the apparent love and affection, essentially human, of the other..
Buttliat line of reasoning is only part of a larger argument. That is, that animals do not " feel pain" in the same sense as human beings speak about themselves, and think about them- selves, as feeling pain. They do feel pain, but they are not conscious that they feel it. Curiously enough, Mr. Robinson, in enlarging upon that theory, which is probably older than Plato, and has been argued at length by Descartes, has been attacked as if be had originated a theory that animals do not feel pain, and that, therefore. cruelty to animals can be condoned, perhaps regarded as negligible. That is a theory which could never fit in with any real " religion of Nature." But the steps in the argument that animals have not the power of thinking about their feelings can be put plainly enough. Mr. Robinson puts them, roughly, as follows :—(1) There cannot be un- happiness or "suffering "—in the human sense of anguish, agony, pain, torment, torture, &c.—unless one knows what one feels. (2) It is inconceivable that the lowest form of plant life, such as the microscopic one-celled plants which form the green slime on a damp paling, can think about the pain they suffer if they are crushed. (3) Since there is no line that can be drawn between the lowest forms of plant and animal life, neither can the lowest animals think about pain. (4) Since, again, there is no line that can be drawn between the ascending forms of animal life, neither can the higher animals think about pain. They have, that is, no conscious thought. (5) But the lowest forms of human life demonstrate the power of conscious thought as revealed in the use of language, in the use of personal decoration, and in the con- ception of a deity. (6) Therefore the line of separation, to mark where self-consciousness begins, can confidently be drawn between the lowest of mankind and the highest of animals. (7) Therefore man alone can " suffer," and there- fore there can be no " cruelty " or " suffering " in Nature, except where it exists in the thoughts of men. The steps of the argument have been shortened, but the sequence is still, perhaps, clear enough. Can the argument be carried a step further ? Mr. Robinson advances it beyond the mere conclusion that only man can "suffer." If only man can " suffer," there must be some purpose in the God-gift of ability to think about pain. It is the spur which is to lifthim away from "cruelty," —the "animal quality lingering in man, the joy of the hunting animal in the possession of a victim." As man advances higher, "becomes civilised, he becomes humane, that is, con- sciously beneficent." Thus, becoming "more Godlike age by age," be is " destined to complete his evolution in power and purity and to rejoin God." It is a strange example of the difficulty of using language sufficiently clear to convey the meaning intended, that the believer in so gentle a creed as that should ever find himself compelled, in defence of his standpoint that man alone can think about pain, to rebut accusations of that very " cruelty" the right understanding of which he believes purifies and exalts mankind.
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