IS NATURE CRUEL?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sra,To my friendly correspondent, Mr. Crick, and to my decidedly unfriendly one, Mr. Green, I would make this com- prehensive answer. Do they really suppose that I could possibly cover so vast a subject in a thousand words ? If they will do me the honour of reading my forthcoming book, The Heritage of Man, they will at least not have reason to complain that I have dealt with the issue in a few hundred
words.
For the Cat-and-Mouse Act I would quote A. R. Wallace against Romanes, " all conclusions derived from the house-fed cat and mouse are fallacious." First, the cat is not a wild animal ; second, its cerebration is not complex enough to enjoy the terror of the mouse ; thirdly, the feline sense regards the mouse's actions as pure movements, not as a manifestation of tortured nerves ; while fourthly, the condi- tions of life in wild Nature entirely preclude the enjoyment of pain as an end in itself. With all respect to Mr. Crick, I can't see what Chinese Communists have to do with the matter, and I would go so far as to say that man's cruelties are a heritage neither from Nature nor his own primitive ancestry. If one takes a thousand examples of man's cruelties, one can prove in every one of them (the Slave Trade, the Spanish Inquisition, certain marriage laws, certain blood sports, to giVe only four) that the cruelty has arisen not instinctively but for various extraneous causes—abuse of power, profitable
exploitation, or some principle that gives the holder of it the complacent certainty that he has the right to persecute.
I do not feel disposed to consider Mr. Green's remarks except very briefly, since they are obviously dictated by an angry hos- tility. It is patent that the ichneumon fly is not consciously aware of inflicting pain upon the caterpillar, and that the caterpillar is not a bundle of neuroses. Also, the ravages of parasites (which are degenerates) have been grossly exag- gerated. It is only when an organism is weakened that the parasite becomes dangerous to it, and only when it is trans- planted to a new environment that its lack of defensive adaptation causes mortality. Let Mr. Green attack Darwin rather than me, for in declaring that a prolonged death-agony was exceedingly rare in Nature, I was but quoting Darwin.—
Previous page
