"Education never stops; we are being educated every day of our lives. Why, only yesterday, I was up in the top field, and I heard a great squealing. I hurried to the place and was just in time to rescue a tiny rabbit from a weasel. I had seen a weasel kill a rabbit many a time before that, and I had never thought anything about it. But yesterday a sudden thought came to me. I remembered the words 'God is good,' and I began to think about them. Then I suddenly said to myself that the words were not true. The world is full of pain and terror; the great law of nature is: Eat or be eaten. I realised for the first time that every hedgerow is a horrid den of suffering and fear. Cruelty is Nature's name, Margaret." "But," she cried in perplexity, "isn't there much good in the world too?" "Yes, dear, there is much good in the world, but cruelty is much more powerful. You and I are cruel unthinkingly. We kill wasps before they sting us; we aren't good enough to give the poor brutes the benefit of the doubt. Your father is a very kind-hearted man, yet he never once thinks of the cruelty he perpetrates when he rears sheep and cattle and lambs for the butcher's knife. You and I dined on roast lamb often this summer, and we never thought of the poor wee creature's agony when the butcher cut its throat. Your mother is kind, yet she will kill a mouse without a thought, and the mouse is to me the bonniest creature that lives. Its great big glorious eyes fascinate me. Think of the kindly people who chase a poor half-starved fox with hounds and horses; sport is the cruellest thing in the world. Shooting, fishing, hunting ... men are as cruel and as devilish as the tiger or the hawk, Margaret." "Animals maybe don't feel the same as we do," she said. "Don't you lay that flattering unction to your soul," I cried. "I used to believe that comforting tale of the scientist that the lower animals do not feel. I ceased to believe it when I tried to put a worm on a fish-hook. When I saw it wriggle about I said to myself: 'This is pain, or rather it is agony.' Think of the pain that your mares and cows suffer when they are having their young. You and I heard the screams of Polly when that dead foal was born this year.