needs shoring up a little. I dwell more and more on (yet get less and less satisfaction out of) the Dominion of Man, his supreme place in the creation, his right to dispose of the lives of inferior creatures. I am not content to kill; I must justify the killing. I find man—myself—slaying right and left, and I cry out that his title to do so is unquestionable—thereby questioning it. And is the argument sufficient? Is there not something like an ignoratio elenchi here? (If one were only certain what an ignoratio elenchi is.)
Again, by constantly telling myself and other people that it is so, I nearly always succeed in believing firmly that cold-blooded animals have not the same power of sensation as warm-blooded animals—that fish, for example, do not feel pain, being provided (trout, at any rate) with horny mouths whose substance is comparable to the human nail, and—it does not hurt to cut one's nails—therefore unsensitive to the penetration of a hook. At one time I have even persuaded myself to look on this circumstance as a direct proof of the Creator's intentions regarding trout and men. But there are other fishes that have soft mouths—roach, for example. Thank goodness I have few roach on my conscience.
Once more—how very much better it is for a wild animal to die at the hand of man than, after a
