Now with respect to fish, they are very inferior in the scale of creation, being, with the exception of the cetaceous tribe, which class with the Mammalia, all cold-blooded animals, and much less perfect than reptiles or many insects. The nervous system is the real seat of all pain; and the more perfect the animal, the more complicated is that system: with cold-blooded animals, the nervous organisation is next to nothing. Most fish, if they disengage themselves from the hook, will take the bait again; and if they do not, it is not on account of the pain, but because their instinct tells them there is danger. Moreover, it is very true, as Sir H. Davy observes, that fish are not killed by the hook, but by the hooks closing their mouths and producing suffocation. How, indeed, would it otherwise be possible to land a salmon of thirty pounds weight, in all its strength and vigour, with a piece of gut not thicker than three or four hairs?
Upon the same grounds that I argue that fish feel very little comparative pain, so do I that the worm, which is so low in the scale of creation, does not suffer as supposed. Its writhings and twistings on the hook are efforts to escape natural to the form of the animal, and can be considered as little or nothing more. At the same time I acknowledge and, indeed, prove, by my own arguments, that it is very cruel to bob for whale.
To suppose there are no gradations of feeling as well as of perfection in the animal kingdom, would not only be arguing against all analogy, but against the justice and mercy of the Almighty, who does not allow a sparrow to fall to the earth without his knowledge. He gave all living things for our use and our sustenance; he gave us intellect to enable us to capture them: to suppose, therefore, at the same time, that he endowed them with so fine a nervous organisation as to make them undergo severe tortures previous to death, is supposing what is contrary to that goodness and mercy which, as shown towards us, we are ready to acknowledge and adore.
I cannot finish this subject without making a remark upon creation and its perfectibility. All respectable animals, from man down to a certain point in the scale, have their lice or parasites to feed upon them. Some wit, to exemplify this preying upon one another, wrote the following:—
“Great fleas have little fleas,
And less fleas to bite them,
These fleas have lesser fleas,
And so—ad infinitum.”
This, however, is not strictly true. Parasites attach themselves only to the great. Upon those they can fatten. Having your blood sucked, is therefore, a great proof of high heraldry and perfectibility in the scale of creation. If animals were endowed with speech and pride like man, we might imagine one creature boasting to another, as a proof of his importance.
“And I, too, also have my louse!”