Crocodiles cry: it is their nature. But they do other things as well: they eat--not only people, but practically everything else in the world that lives and breathes and is at all eatable. I gave them a good digestion for that purpose. They are scavengers; and when they scavenge, they do not always wait till the about-to-become-nuisances die. They make, however, one exception: they do not eat their dentist. And so you may see a crocodile squatting patiently in the mud of the Nile or the Ganges, with jaws wide; while in that place of death a small and tasty bird--whose name I forget--picks his teeth for him. Sentimentalists look on and say, ‘How beautiful! how wonderful!’ So it is; but not in the way they see it. There is no sentiment about it: it is merely the economy of life intelligently applied. The crocodile depends for his good digestion, and his ability to satisfy it, on the efficiency of his teeth; and as he cannot clean them himself he gets a small clean bird to do it for him. Similarly when Mr. Trimblerigg opened his mouth to me, he was doing so for a genuine reason, as do most people: and why should I complain? I get a meal--something that adds to my interest in life. Far more prayers mount up from the world below for selfish than for unselfish reasons (I have experience, and I know); and they are not the less sincere, or the less eloquent, or the less emotional, because they have a mundane and a self-centred object. Now when I compare Mr. Trimblerigg to a crocodile, I hope nobody will suppose that I am taking the ordinary sentimental view of crocodiles, as of creatures more cruel than other creatures. A crocodile when it eats a human being is no more cruel than a thrush when it eats a worm; and if people could only get that well into their heads theology would have a better basis than it has at present. A crocodile only appears more cruel than nature’s average because it is peculiarly efficient to its end, and makes a wider sweep. Being big, it requires a larger meal than others of the predatory species; also it happens to carry on its countenance an almost unchangeable expression of self-satisfaction, and so by appearing pleased it appears more callous. And the fact that it does not always wait for its offal to die is another point which the sentimentalists have against it.