Equivalent to injuries resulting from inanimate things are injuries resulting accidentally from animate beings. If my arm or my foot gives a push to my neighbour, and he is convinced that the push was neither intended nor foreseen nor due to any carelessness whatever on my part, surely he cannot feel angry with me. Why not? Professor Bain answers this question as follows:--"Aware that absolute inviolability is impossible in this world, and that we are all exposed by turns to accidental injuries from our fellows, we have our minds disciplined to let unintended evil go by without satisfaction of inflicting some counter evil upon the offender."[2] Perhaps another answer would be that an accidental injury in no way affects the "self-feeling" of the sufferer. But neither of these explanations goes to the root of the question. Let us once more remember that even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked; and this can neither be the result of discipline, nor have anything to do with the feeling of self-regarding pride.[3] The reason is that the dog scents an enemy in the person who kicks him, but not in the one who stumbles. My neighbour, more clearly still, makes a distinction between a part of my body and myself as a {316} volitional being, and finds that _I_ am no proper object of resentment when the cause of the hurt was merely my arm or my foot. An event is attributed to _me_ as its cause only in proportion as it is considered to have been brought about by my will; and _I_, regarded as a volitional and sensitive entity, can be a proper object of resentment only as a cause of pain. [Footnote 2: Bain, _Emotions and the Will_, p. 185.] [Footnote 3: The Koussa Kafirs, according to Lichtenstein (_Travels in Southern Africa_, i. 254), expect a similar discrimination from the elephant; for "if an elephant is killed . . . they seek to exculpate themselves towards the dead animal, by declaring to him solemnly, that the thing happened entirely by accident, not by design."] We can hardly feel disposed to resent injuries inflicted upon us by animals, little children, or madmen, when we recognise their inability to judge of the nature of their acts. They are not the real causes of the mischief resulting from their deeds, since they neither intended nor foresaw nor could have foreseen it. "Why," says the Stoic, "do you bear with the delirium of a sick man, or the ravings of a madman, or the impudent blows of a child? Because, of course, they evidently do not know what they are doing. . . . . Would anyone think himself to be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks to a mule or bites to a dog?"[4] Hartley observes, "As we improve in observation and experience, and in the faculty of analysing the actions of animals, we perceive that brutes and children, and even adults in certain circumstances, have little or no share in the actions referred to them."[5] [Footnote 4: Seneca, _De ira_, iii. 26 _sq._]