“Good and evil are purely human notions; an almighty God stands beyond good and evil. He is as incomprehensible to us in moral relations as in every other. (_From the highest point of view, yes; but in the lives of men there is such a distinction._) “Only look at the world! The existence of the majority of living creatures is possible only through the destruction of others. What refined cruelty is expressed by the various weapons with which animals are provided. Some zoölogist ought to write an illustrated work entitled, _The Torture Chamber of Nature_. I merely wish to touch upon this field; to exhaust it would require pages and volumes. Your adopted countryman, Wallace, seeks, it is true, to set aside these facts by a superficial observation. That most of the animals that are doomed to be devoured, enjoy their lives until immediately before the catastrophe, takes none of its horror from the mode of death. To be dismembered alive is certainly not an agreeable experience, and I suggest that you should observe how, for instance, a water-adder swallows a frog; how the poor creature, seized by the hind legs, gradually disappears down its throat, while its eyes project staring out of their sockets; how it does not cease struggling desperately even as it reaches the stomach. “Now I, who am but a poor child of man, full of evil inclinations according to Biblical lore, liberated the poor frog on my ground. But ‘merciful nature’ daily brings millions and millions of innocent creatures to a like cruel and miserable end. “I intentionally leave out of consideration here the unspeakable sufferings of mankind. Believers in the Bible find it so convenient to argue about original sin. Where is the original sin of the tormented animal kingdom? “Of course man in his unutterable pride looks with deep disdain on all living creatures that are not human. As if he were not bone of their bone, as if suffering did not form a common bond with all living creatures! (_I have never done that, but I think that it is difficult to establish a thermometer of suffering._) “Do you not bethink you, honoured student of Sanskrit, of the religion of the Brahmins? In sparing all animals, the Hindus have shown only the broadest consistency. “There will come a time when there will be only one religion, without dogma: the religion of compassion. (_Buddhism is founded on Kârunya, compassion._) Christianity, lofty as is its ethical content, is not the goal, but only a stage in our religious development. “It is a misfortune that Nietzsche, the great keen thinker, should have been misled into an opposite conclusion by the mental weakness, the paralytic imbecility, which gradually enveloped his brain like a growth of mould. And the foolish youths, who esteem the expressions of this incipient insanity as the revelations of a vigorous genius, swear by his later hallucinations about the Over-man and the blond beast.