IS NATURE CRUEL ?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sia,—Is Eleanor Tyrrell sure that animals are deprived of the power of speech ? Those of us who associate constantly with them know that they have the power to communicate with each other and convey to each other their desires. They Speak, but we do not understand their language.
The question as to the power of animals to suffer, involved in the communication of John H. Pease, is an exceedingly interesting one. As one who has operated surgically on animals, with and without anaesthetics, I believe, as far as outward observation can take us, that they suffer much as we do. They act as we would act if deprived of human language ; they resist as we would resist, and they protest by every means in their power against the pain given. In many cases I have also known bitter resentment. I speak especially of the dog, cat and home. When we come to indirect evidence the case is indeed strong. An animal's gifts may not be those of " reason " as we know it, but they are often intimately connected with those organs that we associate with our power to suffer—the eye, the ear, the nostril. These organs are developed to a degree unknown to us. Their extraordinary power of vision, hearing and scent, constitute the animal's protection against approaching danger or enable it to supply its bodily needs. Through countless ages these wonderful gifts have been developed, and I would suggest that they are all intimately connected with an animal's power of suffering. Those nerves which give us such acute pain when injured are there in the animal body, yet more wonderfully sensitive, sometimes (as in the case of smell) beyond all we can apprehend. Again, during protracted illness they exhibit (apart from the power of human speech) very much the same symptoms present in us when in long continued pain. Change in their natural habits, loss of appetite and flesh, unthrifty condition of skin and hair, an anxious drawn expression of the face and dull lack-lustre eyes. Animals do tell those who have the power of understanding that they suffer acutely and intelli- gently, and know the misery if not the mystery of pain very much as do their human and inhuman masters.—I am,
Sir, &c., W. BROWN. 594 High Road, Tottenham, N. 17.
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