This needs repeating, because much of the popular knowledge of the day consists in the acceptance of results without examination of the methods of their attainment; somewhat as, in the countryman's simple faith, a thing must needs be true because he has seen it in a book. While the case in point is further confused by the fact that imagination has an important bearing on all our conduct towards the lower animals, and cannot, for that purpose, be too emotionally developed. But it is one thing to err on the safe side in practice, and another to convert such possible error into argument. What then do we really know about the suffering of animals? No reasonable man doubts that they suffer. But the degree and intensity of their suffering is almost entirely a matter of conjecture. We speak of, and are affected by the mass of animal suffering; but we must remember that it is felt distributively. No one animal suffers more because a million suffer likewise. And what we have to consider is the amount which an individual animal suffers. We have no knowledge, but we are entitled to meet conjecture by conjecture. We may fairly suppose that the animals do not 'look before and after,' and it is this that gives its sting to human pain. Again, they would seem like children to give strong indications of slight pain. Further, many muscular contortions which simulate extreme suffering are believed on scientific evidence to be due to quite other causes. And then there are the phenomena of fascination, which may well resemble the experience of Livingstone in the lion's mouth. While many pains are prophylactic and directly contribute to the avoidance of danger and maintenance of life. All these considerations may mitigate our view of animal suffering. But a stronger argument is to be drawn from our profound ignorance of the whole question. Animals can perceive colours invisible to us; they seem to have organs of sensation of whose nature we know nothing; their instincts are far more numerous and finer than our own; what compensations may they not have? Again, what are they? Had they a past? May they not have a future? What is the relation of their consciousness to the mighty life which pulses within the universe? May not Eastern speculation about these things be nearer the truth than Western science? All these questions are in the region of the unknown, and the unknowable; and in face of them the Theistic position is simply this. We believe, on complex and cumulative proof, in an omnipotent and benevolent Creator. That belief is a positive verdict of our reason, interpreting evidence which we consider irresistible. And against such a conclusion no presumption of the imagination, which from the nature of the case cannot possibly be verified, has any logical validity at all: not to mention that such presumptions admit of being met by as probable presumptions on the other side. We decline to arraign our Creator for a deed which we have