Editing The Problem of Pain (section)

=== Animal Pain ===
Lewis turns his attention to another facet of the problem of pain, that of animal pain. He says the Christian explanation for human pain doesn’t work because so far as we can see animals are incapable of sin or virtue so they neither deserve pain nor are improved by it. It is not an unimportant question though since all "plausible grounds for questioning the goodness of God is very important indeed".

Lewis admits that whatever we say about animal pain is purely speculative. He says that we can deduce from the doctrine that God is good that the appearance of cruelty in the animal kingdom is an illusion. But everything after that is guesswork he says.

He continues though by ruling out another speculation. He says that the ruthless biological competition has no moral importance: good and evil only appear with sentience. 
Lewis raises three questions: 1) why do animals suffer? 2) how did disease and pain enter the animal world? 3) how can animal suffering be reconciled with the justice of God?
Although admitting that we don’t know the answer to the first question he still offers his guesses. He begins by distinguishing between types of animals then distinguishing between sentience and consciousness. He says that sentience is experiencing a "succession of perceptions" where consciousness sees the experiences a part of a larger whole. For example, a sentient being would have the experience of thing A then thing B then thing C where consciousness sees it as having the experience of ABC. He says humans are sentient but unconscious when they are sleepwalking.

Lewis allows that some higher form animals (like apes and elephants) might have a rudimentary individual self but says that their suffering might not be suffering in any real sense and humans might be projecting themselves onto the beasts.

Answering the second question, Lewis says that the Fall of Man could have brought about animal suffering. Animal nature could have also been corrupted prior to Adam by Satan because the "intrinsic evil of the animal world lies in the fact that some animals live by destroying each other". Lewis pontificates that Man might have been brought into the World to perform a redemptive function.

Lastly, Lewis responds to the question of justice and animal suffering by making somewhat of a joke. He says that if one wants to make room for animal immortality, although the scriptures are silent, then "a heaven for mosquitoes and a hell for men could very conveniently be combined". He goes on though to say that the objection of scripture’s silence would be fatal only if Christian revelation intended to be a system to answer all questions. Lewis says that "the curtain has been rent at one point, and at one point only, to reveal our immediate practical necessities and not to satisfy our intellectual curiosity".

He says though, assuming that their selfhood is not an illusion, animals cannot be considered in and of themselves. "Man is to be understood only in his relation to God. The beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and, through man, to God." Lewis then tries to correct the notion that many people have that the ‘real’ or ‘natural’ animal is the wild one while the tame animal is unnatural. Lewis says that Christians must believe that since they were given dominion over beasts that everything they do concerning them is either a lawful exercise or a sacrilegious abuse. So the tame animal is the only natural one and any real self it has is owed entirely to its master, and if the animal does have immortality it is through their master. Lewis admits that he’s only talking about a privileged case and not about wild animals or those ill-treated domestic ones.

Lewis says that Christians hesitate to suppose animal immorality for two reasons: 1) it would obscure the spiritual difference between beast and man and 2) it would be a clumsy assertion of Divine goodness.

He continues with further speculations before concluding the chapter saying, "I think the lion, when he has ceased to be dangerous, will still be awful: indeed, what we shall then first see that of which the present fangs and claws are a clumsy, and satanically perverted, imitation. There will still be something like the shaking of a golden mane: and often the good Duke will say, ‘Let him roar again.’"