"Blessed are the merciful, fcr they shall receive mercy." L THE MORAL ASPECTS VIVISECTION. FRANCES POWER COBBE, FIFTH EDITION. LONDON: Published by the Victoria Street Society j^or the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, t KITED WITH THE International Association for the Total Suppression of Vivisection. -'-'- — '- liSXj. Sir Henry Taylor has written noble lines on this matter — vivisection — going deep into the heart of the question : — "Pain, terror, mortal agnonies that scare Thy heart in man, to brutes these wilt not spare, Are theirs less sad and real ? Pain in man Bears the high mission of the flail and fan In brutes 'tis purely pite-ous." 'fHE MERCIFUL MAN. light and simple lines his pathway ran. le of books he knew. The strifeful world id his circling hills roared on unheard. 'And, so he died— the gnarled, old, work- 1 worn man ! I His unshaped thought has been — "Alone I've ' j lived : Alone- I've wandered to that life beyond. Others have friends — wife— children— when I come To that strange land, O who will welcome me?" No grieving tears fell when he passed awav. A hireling's hand arrayed him for the tomb. A neighbor lingered decently, as fell 'J he clods about him in the twilight gray. • Yet, as they fell, along a pathway sped — Beneath celestial blooms his boyhood knew — The earth-freed spirt; and about him flew The little joyous birds his hands had fed. And when before a gateway,flower-bespanned, He humbly paused, nor dared to pass or turn, A dog he once befriended bounded forth And with a joyous whine caressed his hand, And walked before him, showing him the way, The old horse he had loved he too came forth. And pressed his head against his breast Uttering a welcome in his gladsome neigh. And all about him pressed a loving throng. Of birds and beasts most gentle-eyed and kind. (Since this new world held neither pain nor fear. ) And all about him rang a joyous song: Oh, soul so merciful, we welcome thee Unto all life thou hast been ever kind Unto the deathless life we Welcome thee ! Pass on, beloved, and thy rewarding see ! ntrembling, thrilling hope he forward pass Before him swung a portal grandly fair. And the young mother he had never known Flew forth and caught him to her yearniDg breast. SPEAK FOR THE DUMR. Inscribed to Tlie American Humane Association. Speak for the dumb, ye that have tongues; Plead for the wronged, ye that have hearts; Arrest and overthrow of wrongs Are holiest of human arts. The Great All-Father loveth all, Revealing pity by by his deeds, Providing for both great and small, Anticipating all their needs. How blessed are the merciful The Great Kedeemer's lips attest, Declaring that each pitying soul Is kindred to the spirits blest. Who soothes a pang, or calms a grief, Or shields the innocent from wrong, Shall find Heaven his sweet relief And share with angels in their song. REV. F. DENISON. Providence, R. L, Nov., 1884, THE MORAL ASPECTS VIVISECTION. FRANCES POWER COBBE. FIFTH EDITION. LONDON Published by the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, UNITED WITH THE International Association for the Total Suppression of Vivisection. i«»4. price threepence. London : Printed by Pewtress & Co., 28, Little Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C. THE MORAL ASPECTS OF VIVISECTION The notion of the extreme tenderness and sensibility of early youth, especially in the male human creature, is almost as purely conventional and remote from experience as the poetic fiction of an English spring, all sunshine and flowers. That type of cruelty which comes of ignorance and reckless- ness alike of their own suffering and that of others, and wherein Curiosity, not Malice, is the prevailing motive, is at its worst in adolescence ; and only as years go by, and observations multiply, and the experience of pain ploughs up the heart, does sympathy grow by slow degrees, till at last, as Sir Arthur Helps has pointed out, it may be predicted with certainty that a jury of old men will take the most merciful view of every case brought for their verdict. On the larger scale of nations and of humanity, the same process of initiation into the mysteries of suffering and of sympathy has gone forward, and we now behold society so far emerged from the age of barbarism that an English gentle- man would no more insert now-a-days in his account book' (like the pious and charitable Alleyne) an item for " Whip- ping of y e Blind Beare," than the stream of traffic would proceed peacefully over Westminster Bridge were a Fenian's head to be exhibited on the cornice. The influences of civilization, of religion, of cultivation — in short, of all kinds, mental and moral — have softened, iike the rain of heaven, the crust of our dry, hard world, and there is every reason to hope that, unless arrested or perverted, they will trickle downwards and permeate the whole soil of human society, till the " desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." When we think of what earth might become were the tiger passions within our race to be bred out at last, and the divine faculty of love and sympathy to attain its obviously intended develop- ment, it would seem as if efforts for the improvement of our physical or sanitary conditions, or for the advance of arts, science or laws, were scarcely worth making, in com- parison of any step which should bring us nearer to such an age of joy. But it is by no means an even and unbroken line of progress which we can flatter ourselves our race is pursuing towards a millenium of mercy. While the general stream of tendency is undoubtedly in that direction, and may indeed be dimly traced so to have been since the beginning of history, yet there are certain counter currents observable which are setting altogether in an opposite direction. The great wars which the gigantic armies of modern European statecraft have made possible, and the dire legacy of national hatred which such conflicts bequeath to unborn generations, present uudoubtedly alarming obstacles in our road. It may excite surprise, perhaps ridicule, if I point to another and apparently comparatively insignificant feature of modern life, as no less threatening in another way. If, while a patient seems to be recovering from a long malady, a new and strange symptom should suddenly exhibit itself, the physician would unquestionably hold that there existed considerable latent danger. Much such a rapid development of peculiarly acrimonious moral disease appears to be taking place in that part of our social body which is just now the seat of highest vitality. Science is undoubtedly at this hour the ruling passion of the age. What the Chase, War, Art, and Learning, have been in various past epochs, so is the pursuit of Physical Knowledge in our generation. The triumphs thereby achieved have dazzled us, as the people of France were dazzled by the victories of the first Napoleon ; and even such of us as understand but very imperfectly wherein these boasted conquests consist, are ready, like our betters, to cast our palms in the way of the new Messiah and shout " Hosanna ! " albeit we have too seldom reason to believe that he " cometh in the name of the Lord." If any men may claim to be more than others the representatives of the period, in the " foremost files of time," it is our men of science. Whether the rest of mankind will hereafter meekly follow in their mental track yet remains to be seen ; but it is certain that no statesmen, no divines, no metaphysicians offer themselves at the present day with so high pretensions to become our Moses and Aarons, and to lead us — it may be into a Canaan, it may be into a wilderness. What is done, thought, felt, by the men of science is of almost incalculable weight in determining the proximate tendencies of thousands of lesser spirits — the direction to be taken by all those innumerable minds which have no motor force of their own, but follow the Zeit Geist whithersoever he goeth. A peculiar and abnormal manifestation of sentiment among the scientific class, or even of a certain small section of it,* is, therefore, quite otherwise significant than the rise of a silly or cruel fashion among the jennesse doree of the clubs and the race- course, or the prevalence of an idle delusion in certain urban coteries. Such manifestation is, I apprehend, actually observable in the very rapid extension of the practice of painful Experi- ments on Animals, to which some prominence has lately * Probably the great astronomers and geologists would be the very last to countenance such practices as those to which reference is made. Mrs. Somerville's expressions of abhorrence of them are repeated many times in her " Recollections ; " and the late venerable Sir Charles Lyell, a short time before his death, answered the writer's inquiries as to his opinion with a shudder of disgust, and added : "I do not even like to think of all the insects I killed when I was a young man and made my entomological collec- tion. Of course I did it with every precaution to save them pain, but I do not like to remember it now." been given in public discussion. In the present paper I purpose studiously to avoid detailing, or even alluding speci- fically to, any of the multiform horrors which are classified under the name of Vivisections. But without harrowing the reader by descriptions of them, I shall merely point to such experiments as those singularly ingenious varieties of torture which fill the large volumes of French, German and English physiological Handbooks, and suggest to my readers the inquiry ; Whether this sort of thing be not strangely at variance with the tone of thought and practice which at present prevail in other departments of human activity ; and whether such books, for example, as these Catechisms of the Art of Torture, do not even stand unique in the literature of the world ? While our legislation tends to an almost excessive lenity towards criminals ; while our Art and our Letters become yearly more refined and fas- tidious ; while our manners grow more uniformly courteous towards all classes ; and while in a very special manner, we are beginning to take a new interest in the intelligence and affections of the lower animals, and to visit their cruel treat- ment with condign punishment — in the midst of all this humanising process we suddenly find a break, a pause, nay, a very decided retrograde movement. It is at least fitting that we should inquire into the meaning of this strange and startling phenomenon. Let us suppose, to aid our imagina- tion, that something analogous to vivisection were going on in some other department of modern, activity. There are legends that dilettante sovereigns in the Cinque-cento age (when Art was supreme as Science is now), were so anxious to aid the great painters at their work, that they beheaded men to serve for models for John the Baptist, and crucified boys to enable them to verify the details of Calvary. Were a similar expedient suggested in our day in the schools of the Royal Academy, can we conceive the tempest of public indignation which would gather round the head of the enthusiastic Art Director who deemed the " end " of produc- ing a noble and religious picture so sacred that all "means " were lawful to attain it ? Or suppose that, for the sanitary interests of the community, it were proposed to stamp out small-pox by administering poison to every person seized with the disease. Is it imaginable that such a scheme would obtain a hearing ? Or (to come to closer analogies) let us fancy that, in the progress of gastronomy, an experiment, to which we had not become hardened by custom, and no less cruel than the production of foie gyas, or the old process for making white veal, were suddenly to be introduced from France ; or that sportsmen adopted a fashion of merely mangling their game, or using red-hot or poisoned shot. How horrible and startling should we pronounce the novel indulgence of tastes so morbid and pastimes so atrocious ! Yet.such indifference to suffering as we have imagined in our hypothetical cases of artists, or sanitary reformers, or cooks, or sportsmen, would, on the whole, be less monstrous and anomalous than the passion for vivisection among the men of science ; and this for two noticeable reasons. In the first place, artists, sportsmen, and bon-vivants, know compara- tively little of the nature and extent of the suffering caused by lacerations of the living tissues, or the production of morbid conditions, while the physiologists understand the matter to a nicety, and have the most perfect acquaintance with every pain which they cause — nay, the causation which is often the immediate object of their ingenious exertions. As the writer of a letter in the Pall Mall Gazette, bearing the well-known signature of " Lewis Caroll," expressed it : " What can teach the noble quality of mercy, of sen- sitiveness to every form of suffering, so powerfully as the knowledge of what suffering really is ? Can the man who has once realized by minute study what the nerves are, what the brain is, and what waves of agony the one can convey to the other, go forth and wantonly inflict pain on any sentient being ? A little while ago we should have confidently replied, ' He cannot do it.' In the light of modern revelations we must sorrowfully confess he can." Again, in a still more marked way the acts of the vivisectors are anomalous and out of character. It is the boast of the school of science to which they belong that it has exploded the old theory that Man is unique in creation, with a higher origin than the brutes, and a different destiny. They give us to understand that God, — or rather the " Unknown and Unknowable," — has " made of one blood " at least all the Mammalia upon earth. Not merely our corporeal frames, but Thought, Memory, Love, Hate, Hope, Fear, and even some shadowy analogues of Con- science and Religion have been traced by the great thinker at the head of this school, throughout the lower realms of life upon this planet ; and, in the eyes of most cultivated and thoughtful persons in these days, the claims of a dog, an elephant, a seal or a chimpanzee, to consideration and compassion, are at least as high as were those of a Negro, a century ago in the eyes of a Jamaica planter. To find a number of men of science — disciples, it is believed, almost without exception, of the doctrine of Evolution — themselves pursuing, and teaching their pupils to pursue, trains of physiological investigations involving unutterable suffering to these same " Poor Relations " of our human family, is an appalling pheno- menon. That Pope Pius IX. should have refused the late Lord Ampthill's request for permission to form in Rome a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, might, perhaps, be understood on the strange ground his response assumed — viz., that it was " a theological error to suppose that man owes any duty to the animal."* But that the disciples of Darwin should themselves be the teachers and leaders in a new development of most exquisite cruelty to the brutes * This expression has been perhaps scarcely rightly understood. His Eminence Cardinal Manning who has taken a lively interest in the subject and most importantly served the cause of anti-vivisection, made the following observations as a Member of the Deputation to the Home Secretary from the Society for the Protection of Animals liable to Vivisection : " I think it greatly to the honour of England that there is a law in the Statute Book punishing cruelty to animals. That law seems to express the whom they believe to share our blood, our intelligence, and our affections, is indeed a portent of strange and threatening augury. It involves no less than the adoption of a moral theory of boundless application — namely, that the weak have absolutely no claims at all against the strong, but may be tortured ad infinitum even on the chance of discovering some- thing interesting to the lordlier race ; or for the purpose of better fixing an impression by the sight of their agonies than could be effected by the verbal description of a lecturer.* " We ask, bewildered,' says a writer in the Daily News, " how far then will these apologists of vivisection go in approving of the sacrifice of the weak for the sake of the strong ? If it be proper to torture a hundred affectionate dogs or intelligent chimpanzees to settle some curious problem about their brains, will they advocate doing the same to a score of Bos- jesmen, to the idiots in our asylumns, to criminals, to infants, to women ? Truly this mournful spectacle of the perpetration of cruelty by those who best understand what is cruel, and of the con- temptuous disregard of the claims of the brutes by those who have taught us that the brutes are only undeveloped men, is one to fill us with sorrowful forebodings for that future of our race which, from other quarters, seems to promise so fairly. ■" The simultaneous loss," writes one of the deepest and most observant thinkers of the day, " from the morals of our * advanced ' scientific men of all reverent sentiments towards being above them, as towards being below, is a curious and instructive phenomenon, highly significant of the process which their natures are undergoing at both ends." great moral principle that people have no right to inflict needless pain. The plea of scientific inquiry and research appears to present the most refined pretext of cruelty in violation of that law. The infliction of need- less pain is a moral wrong ; and to say that we owe no moral obligations to the lower animals is simply odious and detestable, because a moral obligation is due to their Creator. * Prof. Rutherford, at a meeting of the British Medical Association at Edinburgh, expressly defended vivisection on this ground. IO Of course events, like the sudden development of physio- logical cruelties, do not take place without sufficient cause r and are not without some ostensible excuse on the part of those responsible for them. The common passion for science in general and for physiology in particular, and the prevalent materialistic belief that the secrets of Mind can best be explored in Matter, undoubtedly account in no small measure for the vehemence of the neAv pursuit of original physiological investigations. Then, for the instruc- tion of students in agonizing experiments, other causes may readily be found. Young men at the age of ordinary- medical students are, as I began by remarking, filled with curiosity and exceedingly empty of sympathy and pity. An eminent physiologist recently bore testimony to his surprise when a whole class of his pupils trooped out of his lecture-room, on purpose to see the assistant kill a creature which he had considerately intended should be despatched out of sight before dissection. " I remained alone in my chair," he observed, " a sadder and a wiser man."" The same keenness of observation, or a memory of their own youthful insensibility, ought to teach all professors of physio- logy that they are indulging a maleficent tendency which already exists in their pupils' disposition, when they invite mere lads of the Bob Sawyer type to watch their frightful experiments — the more frightful, so much, alas; the more attractive." And, further still, the proclivity of the time to * Great indignation was expressed at the above remarks in the first edition of this paper by Sir William Gull and Professor Ferrier before the Royal Commission. Sir William Gull &aid (Minutes of Evidence, 5502) that "he had never seen anything affording the remotest justification of the phraseology " of the passage, and Professor Ferrier (ibid, 3350) thought it " a gross libel upon a class." The opinion of two no less eminent men and more experienced teachers, Professor Rolleston, of Oxford, and Dr. Haughton were somewhat different. Professor Rolleston remarked : " Kingsley speaks of 'the sleeping devil, that is in the heart of every man.' but you may say it is the lower nature which we possess in common with the Carnivora. It is just this, that the sight of a living, bleeding and quiver- II youthful independence and raw incredulity of the experience of others, adds strength to the desire of students to see with their own eyes the phenomena which their instructors might almost, or quite, as thoroughly convey to them by means of descriptions, and the extraordinarily perfect models and diagrams now available/" There is nothing intrinsically blameworthy in this wish, which is, perhaps, an integral part of the scientific temperament. But its claims to be indulged, when indulgence means for a sensitive creature exquisite torture, and for the student such satisfaction as he may find in watching it, is another question. Of the argumentative defences of vivisection more must be said. The chief, I think, is a double-barrelled instrument, aimed at our selfishness (under the grandiloquent name of the Benefit of the Human Race) on the one side, and our bad conscience as regards various kinds of cruelty on the other. The latter, or tu quoque argument, which was set forth at large in a semi-jocose pamphlet by the assistant of M. Schiff r and published in Florence under the name of " Gli Animali Martiri," refers us with a sneer to the cruelties of the chase and the shambles, and asks us whether, in a world where such things are done from the very lowest motives, it is worth while to dispute a few victims for those sacred Altars of ing organism most undoubtedly does act in a particular way upon what Dr. Carpenter calls, the emotiono-motor nature in us. I know that many men are superior to it; but I beg to say that if we are talking of legislation, we are not to legislate for the good, but for the mass who I submit are not always good " (1287). Dr. Haughton said : " I would shrink with horror from accustoming large classes of young men to the sight of animals under vivisection. I believe that many of them would become cruel and hardened, and would go away and repeat those experiments recklessly. Science would gain nothing, and the world would have let loose upon it a set of young devils'' 1 (1888). * And which are so conveyed in other branches of study when their exhibition would cause any serious inconvenience. What chemist thinks it needful to blow up a room to show his pupils the qualities of a detonating powder ? 12 Science which form the furniture of physiological labora- tories ? The answer to this appeal is not far to seek. One offence does not exculpate another, even if both be morally on the same level. But (as we have just seen) all other cruelties have some excuse in the ignorance or stupidity of those who inflict them, while those of the Physiologist alone bear the treble stigma of being done in the full light of knowledge by singularly able men, and with the calmest forethought and deliberation. And while every other kind of cruelty is falling into disrepute, if not into disuse, this alone is rising almost into the rank of a profession, like a superior sort of butchery. As to the argument that it " does not become people who eat animal flesh to demur to the torture of animals," it would have seemed that no one with common sense could have employed it, had we not found it repeatedly brought forward by the pro-vivisectors as if it possessed withering force. The cattle we use for food exist on the condition that we shall take their lives when we need them ; and in doing so in the ordinary, not unmerciful manner, we save them the far worse miseries of old age and starvation. To kill a creature quickly is one thing. To cause it to suffer torture which shall make its existence a curse, is quite another matter. Finally, for the tediously reiterated but more reasonable reproach, that the opponents of vivisection make no efforts to put down Field Sports, and count among their numbers many fox-hunters, deer-stalkers, fowlers, and anglers — what shall be answered ? My reply is that the parallel between vivisection and Field Sports is about as just and accurate as if a tyrant, accused of racking his prisoners in his secret dungeons, were to turn round and open a discussion on the Lawfulness of War. That creatures who chase, and are chased all their days in fields and waters, should have an arch-enemy and pursuer in man, may be differently esti- mated as ill or well. But it is almost ludicrous to compare a fox-hunt (for example) with its free chances of escape and its almost instantaneous termination in the annihilation of the poor fox when captured, with the slow, long-drawn agonies J 3 of an affectionate, trustful dog, fastened down limb by limb, and mangled on its torture-trough. An old-world passion, which had in its place and use in another form of societ)', is running to seed in the modern fashion of field sports, such as battues and pigeon matches. A new passion which scarcely had existence twenty years ago, is sprouting above ground and showing its bud in vivisection. Of course the motive of the sportsman, being usually merely sport, contrasts much to his disadvantage with that which the vivisector requires us to believe is his actuating principle. The latter tells us that it is for the exalted pur- pose of alleviating the sufferings of mankind, which touch his tender heart to the quick, that he puts himself and his brute victims to the pain of the experiments ; whereas the sportsman can only sometimes plead that he kills game for food or to clear the land of noxious creatures ; and must usually confess that he hunts, or shoots, or angles for his own pleasure, health, and amusement. So far as the present writer's opinion is concerned, these latter motives do not justify such pursuits when they entail the death of animals neither hurtful to man nor wanted for his food ; nor do any field sports seem to harmonise with the highest type of cultivated and humane feeling. But the men who follow them may plead at least the excuse of custom and of partial ignorance. Turn we, on the other hand, to those boasted motives of lofty and far-sighted philanthrophy which are alleged to spur the vivisector to his ugly work in his laboratory, where no fern-brakes or heathery hills, no fresh breezes or dancing streams, such as throw enchantment round the pursuits of the sportsman, are present to cast any glamour over the process of torture ; and where no chance of escape on the part of the brute, or risk to his own person, may stir his pulse with the manly struggle for victory. In the first place, I may remark that the mental consti- tution of a man must be somewhat exceptional who is enthusiastically anxious to relieve the sufferings of unseen H and perhaps unborn, men and women, but who cares in comparison nothing at all for those agonies which are endured immediately under his eye by creatures who accord- ing to his philosophy are only a step lower in the scale of being. It verges truly on the gigantic and Promethean to talk of such devotion to the interests of Humanity in the abstract ; and when we behold a cultivated and gifted gentle- man selecting freely for his life-work the daily mangling of dogs and cats, we are quite at a loss to qualify the grandeur of his voluntary martyrdom. Perhaps it is not very astonish- ing that homely people, who do not feel in their breasts the vocation for such sublime devotion, should treat the boast of these motives as just a little partaking of the character of moonshine ; and suppose, in a matter-of-fact way, that either the vivisector is a perfectly callous man, whose horrrid work never cost him a pang, :;: or that, if he have any linger- ing feelings of compassion, he puts them aside in favour of sentiments rather more common in the world than such Curtius-like self-sacrifice. As very few of us would purchase immunity from our own diseases at the cost of the torture of a hundred dogs, we may be pardoned for doubting whether the vivisector who cuts them up (as he assures us) for our sakes, is really more interested on our behalf than we are for ourselves. I believe, then, that we may not unjustifiably fall back on the conclusion that the real motives of vivisectors are of one or other of two less exalted kinds. The better class we may * I am compelled to testify that in wading through a mass of this Dead Sea literature, I have never been refreshed by a single passing expression of commiseration for the animals, whose signs of agony are recorded merely as interesting features of the experiments ; or of regret that the higher scientific objects in view necessitated the prolongation of their tortures. If such feelings exist in the hearts of the operators, I congratu- late them on the signal success wherewith they eliminate the slightest trace of them from all their reports. Further, in perusing the books dedi- cated to the instruction of young students, I have looked equally in vain for any hint of caution, or recommendation to parsimony, in the use of the most excruciating experiments. credit with a sincere ardour for Science, and that passion which has been well named the Dilletantism of Discovery. And these belong precisely to that order of homines a gvands desseins, who are more than any others liable to overstep the bounds of justice and mercy, and who more than others need the invention of the social conscience to check their reckless- ness. For a lower class we must, I fear, take the word of a man who worked for four months among them, in a labo- ratory where from one to three dogs were sacrificed daily : " The idea of the good of humanity was simply out of the question, and would have been laughed at ; the great aim being to keep up with or go ahead of our contemporaries in science, even at the price of an incalculable amount of needless torture to anmals.* But the motives which actually influence living vivisectors do not, of course, determine the ethical lawfulness of the practice of vivisection. Our real problem is, whether the highest end to which it may conduce, and which they may possibly contemplate, — viz., either the direct benefit of man- kind by special discovery, or the indirect benefit by the general advancement of science — morally justifies the means whereby it is to be obtained ? Does the Good of Man justify the torture of brutes ? At this point we are commonly called upon to recognize with profound admiration and gratitude the immense value of discoveries said to be due to physiological experiment, and we are challenged to say whether, for example, Harvey's Circulation of the Blood, Bell's Double Function of the Nerves and Simpson's Chloroform, were not secrets worth buying at the price of a considerable amount of animal pain ? The first answer to this " tall talk" is, that not one of these great discoveries appears to have been really made by the aid of vivisection (Mr-. Lawson Tait's " Uselessness of Vivi- section ") ; and that of the other reputed results of such experiments, it may be generally affirmed that they resemble * Dr. Hoggan's letter to the Morning Post. i6 the marvels said to have been wrought by the magicians of Pharaoh, who could bring the plagues upon Egypt, but re- mained quite powerless to cure them. Into such controversies, however, concerning the utility of vivisection, I, for one, refuse to enter. I am quite ready to admit that benefit has frequently resulted in all ages from a variety of evil deeds — from Rapine, Perjury, Infanticide, and especially from the sacrifice of " hecatombs " of women to spare " the smallest pain " (or self-restraint) of men. But not on account of such utility do I consider robbery and falsehood, the murder of infants or the prostitution of hapless women, right or lawful. Thus I refuse even to entertain the question, " Whether the torture of animals can be justified on the plea of benefit to humanity." And for this simple reason : I do not hold the Jesuit principle that " The End justifies the Means," and I am satisfied that the " Means " of Torture are morally for- bidden and unlawful. Bishop Butler's grand axiom that every sentient creature has an indefeasible claim to be spared pain merely because it is sentient, involves the corollary that the claims of the humblest of such creatures must begin some- where, and cannot be wholly and finally abrogated, — as they would be on the hypothesis that we may push our right to take their lives to the ultimate and indefinitely more remote point of putting them to torture. To make of the existence of a creature such a misfortune and curse as that it should seem better it had never been born, — this is assuredly far beyond the exercise of any prerogative which man can claim for himself, either in virtue of any inherent superiority of his nature, or of any privilege he can conceive to have been granted to him by the Creator. To affirm, then, as vivisectors are wont to do, that they would freely " sacrifice a hecatomb of dogs to save the smallest pain of a man," is merely an expression of contempt for the rights of beings feebler than themselves, and which are not yet advanced by evolution to the lordly class of " Bimana," or the genus " Homo." What are the moral grounds, we ask, for this astounding new principle of Race 17 Selfishness? What is there in Man, either considered only as our fellow-bimanous animal, or as an immortal being whose body is but the garment of his soul, which should make his trifling pain so inexpressibly solemn a matter, and the agony of another animal, no less physically sensitive, insignificant by comparison ? Of course we may naturally feel a little more spontaneous sympathy with a suffering man than with a suffering horse. But what is the ethical reason why we should prefer the pain of a thousand horses to that of a single man ? Sir Henry Taylor has written noble lines on this matter, going deep into the heart of the question : — " Pain, terror, mortal agonies that scare Thy heart in man, to brutes thou wilt not spare: Are theirs less sad and real ? Pain in man Bears the high mission of the flail and fan ; In brutes His purely piteous."* There is no sight in all the world, to a thoughtful mind, more suggestive of harrowing reflection, no line of the long " riddle of the painful earth " more confounding to the religious soul, than the sufferings of creatures who have never sinned, and for whom (according to common belief) there will be no compensation for injustice in another life. While human pain has its plausible explanations and its possible beneficent results, animal pain seems (at least to our dim eyes) sheer unmitigated evil. I am at a loss then to conceive on what principle, deserving the name of moral, we are to speak and act as if such evil counted absolutely for nothing, while the aches and pains of men are to be so highly esteemed, that the most cruel sacrifices must not be spared, if a chance exist of alleviating them. When we remember who are the teachers who talk about the " hecatomb," and what is their view of the relationship of man to the lower animals, we discover (as above remarked) that the only intelligible principle on which they proceed is that very ancient one — le droit du plus fort. As the main work of civilization has been * Poems; Vol. III. " The Amphitheatre at Pozzuoli." the vindication of the rights of the weak, it is not too much, I think, to insist that the practice of vivisection, in which this tyranny of strength culminates, is a retrograde step in the progress of our race ; a backwater in the onward flowing stream of justice and mercy, no less portentous than deplorable. But it is impossible to regard this subject as if it were a mere abstract ethical problem. The vivisection of dull reptiles, and wild rats and rabbits, wherewith the elder generation of students contented themselves, is not alone in question, nor even that of the heavy beasts in our pastures. By some strange and sinister fatality, the chosen victims at present, are the most intelligent and friendly of our domestic favourites — the cats who purr in love and confidence as they sit beside us on the hearth, the dogs whose faithful hearts glow with an affection for us, truer and fonder than we may easily find in any human breast. To disregard all the beauti- ful and noble moral qualities which such animals exhibit, and coldly contemplate them as if their quivering frames were mere machines of bone and tissue which it might be interesting and profitable to explore with forceps and scalpel, is to display heinous indifference to Love and Fidelity themselves, and surely to renounce the claim to be the object of such sentiments to brute or man. Our human race has for thousands of years trained these creatures to serve and trust us, till their natures are all bent towards us in love and confidence. So deeply rooted, indeed, is this faith in man in the case of the dogs that those who have witnessed the scenes in the laboratories of physiologists testify that the brutes can scarcely be made to understand that it is intended to hurt and kill them, but still try after hours of agony, to lick the hands of their tormentor, and plead with him for mercy with their beseeching eyes when their limbs are all fastened down and immovable on the operating table. Will any one contend that it is not the vilest, the most odious treachery to betray and mock such faith of the dumb creature, and torture him to death for our purposes, while he, — poor brute, whom we despise, — would 19 die freely to save us from fire or the waves, or perchance expire of grief upon our graves ? Nay, more ; are we not altogether on a wrong track in arguing this question on the level to which we have descended ? Are not Generosity, Self-sacrifice, the readi- ness to suffer, the very rudiments of all virtue and all nobility of character ? Are we to go back to the condition of savages — nay rather of those " Dragons of the prime Which tare each other in their slime." when we have boasted we had ascended to the rank of men, of Christians, of English Gentlemen ? Is it a question for a man who aspires to be a brave or worthy, not to speak of a chivalrous or noble person, whether he may, within the limits of actual offence, spend his days in putting harmless animals on the rack for the benefit of himself and his kind ? And is it our proper Teachers, those who are fit to guide and train young minds, and direct the tendencies of future generations, who are striving to move us to condone and approve such deeds by cant about the " Glory of Science," and by appeals to our miserable, cowardly fears of disease, and our selfish willingness to save " the smallest pain of a man at the cost of the torture of a hecatomb of brutes ? " To me it appears, I avow, that all this reveals a backsliding in feeling and moral aim almost measureless in the depth of its descent. The whole notion of vivisection, as a legitimate exercise and mode of satisfying human desire of knowledge, seems to rest on a radically false conception of the proper ends of human life, and a no less erroneous idea of our relationship to those humbler tribes of creatures who are our fellow-lodgers in this planet-house of the Almighty. As life is more than meat, so are there better things to live for than Knowledge or escape from Pain ; nor is any fact which Science can reveal worth acquiring at the price of selfishness and cruelty. The brutes are not mere toys and puzzles, put here by their Creator and ours that we may freely divert 20 ourselves by breaking them to pieces to see how His wisdom has made them. They are fellow-creatures with ourselves — sinless fellow-creatures, be it remembered, who have broken no Divine law and deserved no punishment. If the day ever come (as it is my faith it will, hereafter) when all men shall look back upon the deeds done upon earth, and behold them in their true colours, must it not be that in the agonies of remorse and self- abhorrence in the vivisector's soul will be meted out the measure of justice he has dealt to his victims ? To restore the true moral perspective of acts of cruelty, it is needful that those who have looked on them so closely and familiarly as to have become blind to their enormity should learn how they appear to others whose eyes are yet fresh to the horrid spectacle, and who can take in from their remoter standpoint at once the vaunted bribe of relief to their own maladies, and the price which must be paid for it beforehand, in the pangs of innocent creatures. And as the lay conscience was needed to check the persecutions, inquisitions and Autosda-fe which the priesthood of Religion justified on the high plea of the eternal interests of mankind, so now the same lay conscience is needed to stop the scarcely less barbarous cruelties which that other Priesthood — the Scientific — justifies on the far inferior ground of our bodily welfare. iyiixduess tcr Quintals. But who shall speak for those whose mouths are dumb? c P 7e' braVe brUteS ' With patieQt ^ s ' «* ^et that go and To do our bidding, toiling on without reward or fee Wearing their very lives away, poor things, for you and me The brave dumb things! no voice have they to say, « Why do ye Am I not man's most faithful slave, his friend and not his foe? Give me one kind, caressing word, undo this heavy load Nor torture me along the way with whip and thong and goad - Caroline A. Mason, in Our Dumb Animals ' It is a theme of literary gossip that the poet-laureate's mantle will fall on the shoulders of Lewis Morris shortly, owing to Lord Tennyson's increasing infirmities. The fol- lowing verses, therefore, may interest our readers, even be- yond the beauty and power found in the poet's lines : — In a German Laboratory. A most intelligent dog I took, Affectionate, full of caressing grace, With something of human love in his look, And such a trustful, half-human face. Had learnt tricks, too — would give you a paw Where a brother-man would offer a hand, Right or left, as you asked him ; could understand Your speech — it might almost fill one with awe. See how near to mankind, yet how far These dumb and pitiful creatures are ; How all their faith and belief and love Is centred in Man as a Lord above. And looking into his eyes for awhile — For knowledge is precious and gained through pain — I bound him down with a pitying smile, And deftly removed the left lobe of his brain. And then, with all that I had of skill, I healed it again, so that presently, Though lame and sick, in his love for me The creature strove to obey my will. And when I asked him to give me a paw, He gave the left first, but when for the right I asked, his maimed brain failing him quite, Gave the left — and I thought I had touched on a Law. So I persevered, and the brute again, With a loving, sorrowful look of pain, Brought the left paw over the helpless right, And I marked the effort, with deep delight. And having pushed knowledge so far, again, I divided the opposite lobe of the brain, And the poor brute, though willing to offer a paw, Could no longer obey — and I grasped a Law. Later on, still athirst for knowledge, once more I carved the weak brain, as I did before, Till the poor dumb wretch, as he lay on his side, With a loving look regarding me. died. Poor brute ! he lies dead for knowledge, and I, If I grasp not the clue, yet I may by-and by. Strange how weak Man is, and infirm of will, For sometimes I see him and shudder still ! — Lewis Morris. DUKE .MEOi -CENTER LIB. HISTORICAL COLLECTION