Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/32

18 memento of sin; for surely death in this our world is the bitter fruit of human transgression. "By one man sin entered into the world, and ." Yet the infliction is not to the animal creation an unmitigated evil. A far greater amount and variety of animal life is thus sustained than could be supported otherwise, and life to them is happiness. They have no terrors of futurity beyond death, and probably have little fear of death itself, beyond the habitual apprehension which prompts the exercise of caution and sagacity. Death is the pang of a moment, and is rather the termination of a pleasant active life, than an actual evil. The gradual exhaustion of strength by advancing age, or the dying of want from inability to procure the needful food, would be far more dreadful. Even the very exercise of the faculties arising from the present state of things,—the vigilance, the stratagems, the activity, the excitement involved in pursuit and attack on the one hand, and in escape or defence on the other, all are doubtless contributive to the relish of life, and to their consequent happiness. The poet's judgment is according to truth:

Harsh seems the ordinance, that life by life Should be sustain'd; and yet, when all must die, And be like water spilt upon the ground, Which none can gather up,—the speediest fate, Though violent and terrible, is best. O with what horrors would creation groan, What agonies would ever be before us,— Famine and pestilence, disease, despair, Anguish and pain in every hideous shape, Had all to wait the slow decay of Nature! Life were a martyrdom of sympathy; Death, lingering, raging, writhing, shrieking torture;