Great Testimony against scientific cruelty

Transcribed from the 1918 John Lane edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII
printed by william brendon and son, ltd., plymouth, england
If the support of great and good men, famous throughout Christendom, will avail to justify a cause, then indeed we who would utterly abolish the torture of animals by vivisection can never be put out of countenance.
Difficult would it be indeed to bring together the authority of so many resounding reputations against any other act of man, since slavery was abolished.
The poets, philosophers, saints and seers of England have united to anathematise it as an abomination, and as a deed only possible to a craven.
It seems strange that in the face of such authentic condemnation the horrid practice has not disappeared off the face of the civilised earth, until it is observed that it has received the shameless support of science, which for two generations has usurped
an authority over conduct for which it possesses no credentials. The modern prostration of mankind before science is a vile idolatry. In the realm of ethics science is not constructive but destructive. It exalts the Tree of Knowledge and depresses the Tree of Life.
How is the character of man elevated or purified by all the maddening inventions of science? How indeed! Are we made better men by being whirled about the globe by machinery, by the increased opportunities for limitless volubility, or by the ingenious devices for mutual destruction? And how are we morally advantaged by the knowledge of the infinite depths of space, the composition of the stars and the motions of the planets?
The old Persian, when his far-travelled offspring returned with these wonders to tell, replied: “My son, thou sayest that one star spinneth about another star; let it spin!”
And Ruskin once remarked: “Newton explained why an apple fell, but he never