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Wallace is not considering any emotional experience animals may be having such as fear, anticipation, loneliness etc. He is discussing pain as a necessity for survival of the fittest and considers the whole range of animal life from paramecia to humans. He references Charles Darwin when he writes that the sensation of pain has been developed and therefore proportionate to each species to its needs and not beyond those needs. He continues saying that, “Only as the organism increased in complexity, in duration of life, and in exposure to danger which might possibly lead to its death before it could either leave offspring or serve as food to some higher form---only then could pain have any use or meaning.” Wallace believes that only in the higher animals, primarily mammals, does there appear to be any need for acute sensations of pain but concludes that the amount of pain is moderate in lower animals and very much less than the pain humans experience. Remember he titled his chapter “Is Nature Cruel” and addresses pain and cruelty together stating that death of the lower animals would be rapid and almost painless and therefore the “widespread idea of the cruelty of nature is almost wholly imaginary.”

Interestingly he cites an example where humans have not evolved pain in response to “recently discovered” Xrays which cause “internal disorganization” unaccompanied at the time by pain but can result in death. He ends his thought by saying that “Pain has not accompanied the incidence of these [X] rays on the body, because living organisms have never hitherto been exposed to their injurious effects.”

I think when one reads Wallace that one should remember that Wallace thought that the world and everything in it was created for the benefit of humans, that is for the benefit for man’s spiritual development. - AOD

Beside the obvious outward biological reason for experiencing pain, i.e. avoiding damage to the body pain may also have a much deeper hidden reason for existing? We may experience so much pain in this life because it also has something to do with the hidden reasons "why we are here?" Pain teaches the soul about the body. Little bits of information that imprint on the soul about the body.

Pain imprints on the soul the parameters of the physical body. It "teaches" the soul what "out there" looks and feels like, and the shape of the body. When we experience pain we experience it in our brain but the sensation is felt wherever the pain is located - which is an amazing thing considering the actual "thought" is taking place inside our brains.

What it means and how it feels to be inside a body. To inhabit a body. The difference between feeling warm and feeling hot is a matter of degree. Same with cold. Each touch, both positive and negative, like a bit of computer code, imprinting on the soul the physical parameters of the body. Stub your toe, hit your funny bone, scratch an itch, paper cuts, brush your hair or your teeth, eat a hot pepper, burns, touch your face, feel the wind against your skin, and it's sending little bits of code to the collective unconscious of what it feels like to be in a body.

If you ask a cutter why they intentionally take a knife and cut themselves the answer often is "I just wanted to feel something." Cutters are often young girls who live in middle class homes in suburban areas and they stay in their rooms and they aren't experiencing anything physical. They aren't getting bit by fleas and lice or mosquitoes and the "soul" isn't experiencing anything physical which has a whole lot to do with "why we are here."

The same reason why South American Indians stick their hands down in bags of bullet ants and allow themselves to be stung numerous times, or why religious people in Malaysia stick metal bars through their body, or in the Philippines men reenact the crucifixion, or why North American Indians have a ritual where they tie themselves to thongs held to their bodies by piercings in their chest and hang on poles, in Africa there is a tribe that beat each other with sticks,... all for the same reason, teaching the soul about the body and the parameters of the body. What "out there" looks and feels like which is something that can't be learned in heaven because the physics of the place we call heaven is very different from the physics we experience here.

If we are here simply to learn what can't be learned in heaven then perhaps, since time and space doesn't exist on the other side, then being in a body and the shape of that body can't be learned or understood in heaven until it is first experienced and learned here? Before one can know or relate to being in a body one first has to be born and spend some time in a physical body?

The deeper hidden reasons for "why we are here." Experiencing separation to learn what it means and how it feels to be separate, time and space, what it feels like to be in a body and be limited by the body - and the parameters of that body, and make memories of what it was like and how it feels to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe.

Hello. On your front page a lot of links are not working, R101 case and many other, does not work. Please check and relink.

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