The little bird twitters and sings in its cage, and among ourselves the
blind man and the cripple whistle and sing, too, feeling at times a
lower kind of contentment and cheerfulness. The chaffinch in East
London, with its eyeballs seared by red-hot needles, sings, too, in its
prison, when it has grown accustomed to its darkened existence, and is
in health, and the agreeable sensations that accompany health prompt it
at intervals to melody, but no person, not even the dullest ruffian
among the baser sort of bird-fanciers would maintain for a moment that
the happiness of the little sightless captive, whether vocal or silent,
is at all comparable in degree to that of the chaffinch singing in April
"on the orchard bough," vividly seeing the wide sunlit world, blue above
and green below, possessing the will and the power, when its lyric ends,
to transport itself swiftly through the crystal fields of air to other
trees and other woods.
I take it that in the lower animals misery can result from two causes
only--restraint and disease; consequently, that animals in a state of
nature are not miserable. They are not hindered nor held back. Whether
the animal is migrating, or burying himself in his hibernating nest or
den; or flying from some rapacious enemy, which he may, or may not, be
able to escape; or feeding, or sleeping, or fighting, or courting, or
incubating, however many days or weeks this process may last--in all
things he is obeying the impulse that is strongest in him at the
time--he is doing what he wants to do--the one thing that makes him
happy.
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