1322. CLIMATE, Sufferings from cold.
—I have no doubt but that cold is the source
of more suffering to all animal nature than hunger,
thirst, sickness, and all the other pains of
life and of death itself put together. I live in a
temperate climate, and under circumstances
which do not expose me often to cold. Yet
when I recollect, on one hand, all the sufferings
I have had from cold, and, on the other, all my
other pains, the former preponderate greatly.
What, then, must be the sum of that evil if we
take in the vast proportion of men who are
obliged to be out in all weather, by land and by
sea; all the families of beasts, birds, reptiles,
and even the vegetable kingdom! for that, too,
has life, and where there is life there may be
sensation.—
To William Dunbar. Washington ed. iv, 347.
Ford ed., vii, 482.
(W.
Jan. 1801)
