THE EVIDENCE OF FEELING IN OTHER ANIMALS.
MR. ANDREW LANG, who has indulged himself, in the new number of Longman's Magazine, in a criticism on our remarks on " The Pitilessness of Angling," seems to have mistaken, perhaps rather wilfully, the scope of those remarks, which were less directed to an attack on anglers as such, than to an attack on the pride with which they seem to regard their favourite amusement as one which entitles them to be looked upon as a specially sensitive, humane, and distinguished class of human beings. The tenor of Mr. Andrew Lang's reply shows that he at least is possessed of the self-righteous- ness which we discerned in so large a proportion of the class, in no common degree ; but then, Mr. Andrew Lang, besides taking an evident pride in the poetical character of his favourite sport, is a humorist, and it may be remarked of almost all humorists, that any claims which they may think they have on other grounds on the sympathy and admiration of their fellow- creatures, become ever so much more imperious under the influence of their modest consciousness of being able to laugh with good effect at other people. The exceedingly elaborate drollery with which he describes an imaginary attempt to hook the editor of this journal with devilled whitebait, and to de- scribe how, if hooked, be would sulk beneath chairs and rush about till he broke the line on the banisters, is so heavy as to indicate rather a determination to execute mild vengeance on any one who depreciates from any point of view the character of his favourite sport, than the delicate play of his ordinary humour, which is not usually so long-drawn and elephantine. But we return to the subject only because Mr. Andrew Lang seems to be so very certain that if a fish which has got one hook in its mouth rises immediately afterwards to another similar hook, he cannot have suffered very much from the first. We should have thought that nothing could be much less certain ; and that the confidence with which anglers always produce this argument shows, as well as anything could show, how easy it is, at all events on matters that are not of the very first im- portance, to convince yourself of anything of which you would like to convince yourself. We have, in the case of the fish at least, the very faintest of arguments from analogy, by which to judge of the rationale of their actions, if rationale of any kind there be. Mr. Andrew Lang takes for granted, in his argument that the fish, if he felt keen pain when the hook entered his mouth, would ascribe that pain to his having attempted to catch at the fly, and would therefore be as un- willing immediately to repeat that operation as an editor endowed with an infinitesimal amount of reason would be, if he had suffered from the same cause. But just apply the rationale of that argument to the case .of a horse, which, as we may fairly suppose, has a higher nervous organisation than a fish. Suppose a dog barks at his heels, and he kicks out and wounds himself against the ironwork of the carriage. Does the wound render him at all less willing to kick out again P On the contrary, the chance is that he will kick twice as hard when he feels the pain which the first blow gave him. What is there to prove that the fish does not make his second bite in resentment at the pain which the first bite gave him, instead of for the purpose of furnishing the self-righteous angler with convenient evidence that the hook planted in his month is entirely indifferent to him, and, indeed, has rather stimulated his appetite for more hooks P
" I have known two boys," says Mr. Andrew Lang, " fishing for perch hard by each other, see first one of their two floats go down, and then the other. Both pulled in, and both were fast in the same perch. After swallowing one hook, it went on and took the other. This is not a fable ; the scene was Faldenside Loch, many years ago. It can scarcely be argued that there was pitilessness in fishing for this voracious perch." We should think it very arguable indeed. The assumption that it rather liked the first bait in spite of the hook, and therefore endeavoured to swallow a second, is the purest con- jecture, and, to our minds, a most improbable conjecture. It is at least quite as probable, and we should say much more so, that the second snap was a sort of blind revenge for the pain of the first, something like Mr. Andrew Lang's snap at the Spectator after be had read the article on " The Pitilessness of Angling." Mr. Andrew Lang goes on to argue that the hook often lodges in a cartilage which is not sensitive. That may be true. But if we are to judge by analogy at all, can even positive pain be more oppressive than that nightmare sense of unexpected and unintelligible helplessness which comes upon a being suddenly deprived of the power of free motion P We doubt whether this nightmare feeling is in any degree less overwhelming than the sense of acute suffering. In truth, a sudden and rapid death-blow is the only humane form of capture.
But we freely admit that nothing can be fainter than our means of judging how much or how little fishes suffer from the wound of the hook in their mouths. We may, we think, fairly hope that the suffering is less in the less highly organised creatures, though, judging from observation alone, we should fear that many dogs suffer rather more than less than men would suffer under the same physical circumstances. Still, it is preposterous to assume, as the argument from the conduct of the fish after carrying away one hook does assume, that the fish has recognised the act of biting at the supposed fly as the cause of its pain, and has judged that pain to be so slight that it would be desirable to run the risk of it again for the chance of a pleasant mouthful. That demands so much of at least instinctive reasoning in the fish, that we should be very slow to accept it as the probable rationale of the circumstances. An unreasoning irritation is, we should think, a far more probable consequence of the pain inflicted, even if that pain be much less in the fish than it would be in man ; and an unreasoning irritation is more likely to lead to a second snap under such circumstances than healthy appetite.
Unquestionably the whole subject of animal feeling is one in which all our inferences are of the most doubtful kind. There is probably so much of which men have no experience in the lower tribes of animals, especially when you get down to creatures so different from us in organisation as fishes, and it is likely that so much of which men have the keenest experience is not to be found in the lower organisations, that when we begin to reason from analogy we are on the most uncertain ground. Still it is clear, we think, that if the nervous system of fishes is at all like ours, they must suffer more or less from the tearing of a hook in their mouths ; indeed, if they do not, it is quite clear that we must altogether give up the attempt to reason from analogy to their state of feeling. But when we go on to push the argument from analogy so far as to argue that because a man would avoid doing over again the very thing which had caused him pain, the fish would avoid it too, we are on analogical ground indefinitely more doubtful than the other. This implies, first a judgment as to the cause of the pain, and next a resolve not to risk the repetition of the cause of the pain,—in fact, a series of acts of judgment which we have no right to attribute to a fish at all. We have almost as little right to suppose that all this would go on in a fish's mind, as we have to imagine that fishes have a maxim current amongst them equivalent to ours that the best remedy for a bite is a hair of the dog that bit us, and that they grasp at the second hook with a deliberate view of curing the pain which the first had caused them. If gentle-hearted anglers were not full of an almost immeasurable self-satisfaction, they would at least never have relied on so very untrustworthy an argument as this, built up on the willingness of a wounded fish to bite again, as a sufficient justification for the assumption that their somewhat cruel method of getting the fish out of the water, is not really cruel at all.
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