In our own case, we can give
no more perfect definition of happiness, than this exercise and this
satisfaction; and we must therefore conclude that animals, as a rule,
enjoy all the happiness of which they are capable. And this normal state
of happiness is not alloyed, as with us, by long periods--whole lives
often--of poverty or ill-health, and of the unsatisfied longing for
pleasures which others enjoy but to which we cannot attain. Illness, and
what answers to poverty in animals--continued hunger--are quickly
followed by unanticipated and almost painless extinction. Where we err
is, in giving to animals feelings and emotions which they do not
possess. To us the very sight of blood and of torn or mangled limbs is
painful, while the idea of the suffering implied by it is heartrending.
We have a horror of all violent and sudden death, because we think of
the life full of promise cut short, of hopes and expectations
unfulfilled, and of the grief of mourning relatives. But all this is
quite out of place in the case of animals, for whom a violent and a
sudden death is in every way the best.
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