VIVISECTION AND THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
Let us now leave the opinions of anti-vivisectionists, and carry the problem on to higher ground. Let us see what are the rights of man in Nature, and what is the purpose of human life.
Amidst all the unsettled and contradictory theories accumulated by philosophers, thinkers and founders of religion, there remains scarcely any fixed and immutable theory save that of one dominating principle: The respect and love of our brothers in humanity. All else is contestable and contested. Though we are unable to demonstrate it formally, there is one universal moral law (the great Categorical Imperative of Kant) which commands us to be just and beneficent to our fellow-creatures. All the most subtle sophisms will never be able to persuade me that I ought not, above all things, to feel solicitude for the lives and happiness of men.
I willingly admit that beside man there is the animal, our inferior brother as it has been ingeniously called, so that we have also our duties towards these inferior brothers. But this must never be to the detriment of our real brothers. It seems to me insane to consider the life of a cat of more account than that of a man; the pain of a dog than that of a child. All the more so because living matter, if I may use that expression, possesses varying degrees of perfection; from the sea-weed up to man there are successive stages of living forms which constitute an uninterrupted chain ending in its final phase, which is man.
Man, by his power of thought, and consequently of suffering, by the conception which he is able to make of the non-self, by his faculties of abstraction and the notion of good and evil, is vastly superior to every other living being. So that, for respecting, defending and loving men, I have not only the reason that man is my brother, but also that this brother is superior to every other living thing.
That is why a moral code must be essentially human, having for its highest object the happiness of other men. Every other code of morals, having in view a different purpose supporting itself on metaphysical lucubrations or haunted by puerile anxieties, such as the adoration of beasts, appears to me to bear the stamp of fetishism. An unknown power has caused us to be born; we are entirely ignorant of our destinies, we know not why we were born, why we die, why, following in the wake of countless generations, we transmit the vital spark to countless succeeding generations. We know nothing of all that; but it matters little from the point of view of our duty. Duty is independent of all theory. No mere religion is necessary to constitute a moral code.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, or rather our moral code, will be the religion of humanity. It does not seem to me possible to conceive of any other.
And when we say humanity, we take that word in its largest acceptation. It is not a question of compatriots, nor of Europeans, nor even of humanity of to-day. It is also a question of the humanity of the future. We have our duties towards the man of to-day; but we have also our duties towards the man who will live in the centuries to come. We should prepare the way for a happier and better humanity. Our task is not limited to the present hour; it extends to all those human beings who will come after us. Inasmuch as we of to-day, at every moment of our lives, benefit from the accumulated services of our ancestors, so the men to come will profit by the benefits which we are endeavouring to prepare for them.
Assuredly, Humanity will not be eternal, and Science seems to prove that a time will come when the sun's heat will be insufficient to develop life on the surface of our puny planet. A time will come when the earth will have cooled down and become like our pale satellite, the moon, a dead star, where the debris of extinct multitudinous civilisations will disappear under the ice. But what matter! We have not to trouble ourselves about those far-off times. We have to think of the man of the coming centuries, and, at the same time, it goes without saying, of the man of to-day.
To lessen their misery, to make their existence less lamentable, to develop within them the sentiments of justice and brotherhood, to secure their moral welfare and their material welfare, that is our strict and sole duty. I recognise no other.
Now, there is but one way open to attain this noble goal: Science. We are plunged in an ocean of gloom. All is dark, unknown, disturbing. We have not yet understood anything of the blind forces surrounding us on all sides. We are but feeble beings cast into the midst of sovereign powers which overwhelm and bear us down. Now, to avoid being completely and definitely crushed out of existence, it is necessary to penetrate into the nature of these forces. Alas! we shall never penetrate into them, for it is madness to think that a particle of the whole can ever fully cognise the whole; but we may at least demonstrate some facts, fathom some phenomena, perhaps trace a few of the features of certain laws. That is enough to make us instantly the masters of matter and not its slaves.
Every new truth at once brings about an amelioration in human conditions. It may be said that our happiness is made up of truth. Let us suppose what is improbable, that is to say, that we have come to know all the laws of Nature, should we not immediately become all-powerful? Should we not be the sovereign masters of disease and pain, perhaps of old age and death?
Such, indeed, appears to be the conviction of the human societies which assign a preponderating rôle to Science. They have understood that there is no better future in store for the human being than that which Science will bring about for him.
To be able to appreciate the extent to which the man of to-day is materially and morally happier than the man of past ages, we have only to compare the present state of our civilisation with the state of past civilisations. We may say that an English labourer of to-day has a much easier existence than had an Italian prince of the fourteenth century. Everywhere, the progress achieved by Science has entered into the life of each individual. We find it in the book we read, in the electricity which gives us light, in the train or the steamer which carries us to the uttermost corners of the earth in little time and at little cost. It is the same thing also with medicaments, which are certainly able to lessen the pain of disease.
Moral progress has kept pace with material progress. At the same time that matter has been overcome, our customs have become gentler; individual liberty is a sacred thing; each citizen takes part in the decisions of his government; there is no longer either slavery or torture or tyranny of conscience. In a word, the man of to-day is happier and more powerful than the man of bygone days.
This happiness has not been acquired through any providential "miracles." No God came down from His Heaven to alleviate human misfortunes. It is man, and man alone, who, by his genius and his labours, has been able to make himself master of the forces which, even yesterday, held him in bondage. And we cannot be too grateful to our fathers for their immense and fruitful labours, by which they succeeded in constructing the society in the midst of which we live. It is still wretched enough, this society of ours, afflicted with crimes and horrors, the infamy of which we understand full well; but however wretched it may be, it is a thousand times less wretched than was society of yore.
Therefore, this formal conclusion may at once be deduced; we must do for our descendants what our fathers did for us. We would be without excuse if we rested content to benefit from the works of our predecessors without ourselves also creating something, without leaving, by means of our personal labours, a better lot to our descendants. The man who has not understood this supreme duty is truly unworthy of being a man.
Verily, every individual, when he has arrived at the end of his life, should examine his conscience and ask himself if in the humble sphere of his action, he has not, even he also, contributed a stone to the human edifice, if he has not done his share in promoting and increasing the forces of humanity.
Since matters stand thus, since the development of Science is the fundamental condition of the happiness of man, we must resolutely put Science at the basis of every civilisation. Alas! it has not been so up to the present; and if we study the development of human societies, we see that they are above all things attracted to war. Science has had only the leavings. But the time has come when man should no longer believe that the principle of morality is man's struggle against man. That was the history of bye-gone times. The history of to-day, and especially the history of to-morrow, is the struggle of man against matter, the subjection of natural forces to our intelligence. And there is no other way to subjugate these forces than by learning to know them.
Then Science will be put in the foreground. And without making any classification which distinguishes between the sciences, which are all useful, beautiful, and noble, for all contain a portion of truth, we shall be permitted to say that the Science of life is one of the most useful, the most noble, and the most beautiful.
Now, the Science of life is Physiology, taking physiology in its widest sense, that is to say, the study of normal beings and of diseased beings. It is proved by innumerable facts, facts which only bad faith and ignorance can call into question, that our physiological knowledge is due, in a very large measure, to experimentation. If in thought we suppressed the scientific results which experimentation has conquered, we should have but an inferior science, within the reach of the Brahmans may be, but unworthy of our present scientific standing. We should know nothing of the circulation of the blood, nor the function of the blood corpuscles, nor the formation of sugar, nor the innervation of the glands, nor the contagiousness of disease, nor the power of poisons; we should be reduced to the notions of Hippocrates, we should be less advanced than Galileo, the first ingenious experimenter who indicated, less by his writings than by his experiments, that the basis of physiology, and consequently of the whole of pathology, is experimentation on animals.
Those most sincere persons who wish to banish experimentation from Science are consequently, I do not fear to say it, standing in the position of direct contradiction to true morality. To refuse man the right to study living nature, is as though we declared that living nature ought not to be known. Alas! anti-vivisectionists will not listen. In vain do we tell them that we, physiologists, preserve man from disease; that we have alleviated the ills of our human brothers. They stop up their ears; they shut their eyes; they have no pity for the sufferings of human beings. It seems as though the tears of their brethren were profoundly indifferent to them. Is this a high morality? Is this a realisation of their duty as men? They cover with opprobrium the names of Harvey and Jenner, Bernard and Pasteur, Spallanzani and Helmholtz. What base ingratitude! It is these great men who have turned aside many excruciating sufferings from humanity; it is these grand men who have bestowed a better lot on so many human beings. When, therefore, they dare to calumniate the masters who have scattered over us so much beneficence, anti-vivisectionists seem to me to be not only the most ungrateful but even the cruellest of men.
Fortunately the conquering march of Science will not be hindered. We shall never return to those sinister times when our great Vesalius had to forfeit his life for having dared to dissect a human corpse. We shall continue to make Science advance towards its great aim, the good of man.
And this is the moment which has been chosen for striving to arrest the march of Science: when epidemic disease, such as the plague and cholera, is checked; tuberculosis half-conquered; diptheria rendered inoffensive; operations become almost harmless; cancer on the eve of being understood and subjugated! And are we to stop there? Are we not to seek to fathom the many problems still waiting to be solved, and on which depend the lives of so many human beings, and so much human happiness? Do you believe that Science has come to an end? Certainly we already know a great deal; but what we know is as nothing compared to what we do not know.
An immense domain of unknown truths lies open to our activity. And we are able to forsee what inexpressible benefits these new truths will scatter over suffering humanity. Consequently, everyone, every man enamoured of goodness and justice, should be filled with respect for Science, and set all his hopes on her.
At the same time, however great may be my adoration for Science, it must not be at the expense of human personalities, or, let us say it distinctly, at the expense of animal personalities, which although uncertain and indistinct, still merit a share, and a large share, of justice and of pity.
As for human personalities, without the slightest doubt, we have not the right to sacrifice an innocent creature for Science. Every human being ought to be treated with respect, and we have not the right to kill and martyrise a human being even if his death and his martyrdom might serve the cause of Science.
As for animal personalities, the question becomes much more doubtful. For inferior beings with indistinct consciousness, and, without a doubt powerless to perceive pain, no scruple should hold us back. But if it concerns beings nearer to ourselves, such as monkeys, cats, dogs, horses, all certainly capable of feeling pain, we must be chary of inflicting pain, and experiment only after having totally abolished in them all sensation of pain. But under penalty of falling into fetishism, we must not fear to use the life of these beings in order to prolong the life of man. Every time we propose to make an experiment, it is as though we put this question to ourselves: is this dog worth more than a man? or than a hundred men? or than the whole of humanity to come? Thus put, the problem bears only one solution: Avoid giving pain to the animal on condition that it is not at the cost of innumerable human pains. Moreover, it is the same here as in every question we may wish to investigate: Each of the two adversaries set out from a just principle, incontestably just. But each one pushes the just principle so far that he ends by transforming it into a colossal absurdity.
In the present case, the anti-vivisectionists say: pain is an evil, even the obscure pain of the lowest animal is an evil. Now, we should do no evil; therefore we should not at any price inflict any pain whatsoever, however light it may be, on even the lowest animal. That is their syllogism. It cannot be replied to, for it is perfectly correct.
We on our side say: The suffering of man is a sacred thing. Science casts aside suffering from man. Therefore we ought to sacrifice inferior beings to the cause of Science, that is to say to the happiness of man. There again lies an irreproachable syllogism.
But these two syllogisms, if driven up to their ultimate conclusions, would lead to nonsense on the one hand and cruelty on the other. If we were to listen only to the friends of animals, we should not have the right to bleed a horse in order to save the lives of 400 children; and this contention would be both foolish and cruel.
If we were to listen only to the friends of man, we should have the right, simply as dictated by our might and fancy, to cause suffering to dogs, cats, monkeys, all innocent and sensitive animals, under pretext that these tortures are capable of alleviating human pain. That also would be folly and cruelty.
Fortunately, wisdom avoids both extremes; it fears the brutality of hard and fast syllogisms, which are absurd even by their very severity. Yes, there are the rights of man; yes, there are the rights of animals; and all our efforts should consist in holding an even balance between these two sometimes antagonistic rights. Do not let us push our reasonings to their logical but absurd extremes. Pre-occupation for the welfare of future humanity and of Science does not authorise us to be wicked and unjust towards the men of to-day, even towards one single man. So that, notwithstanding my worship of Science, I would not sacrifice human lives to her. And, notwithstanding all my respect for animal pain, I would look upon the man as supremely ridiculous, even guilty, who would not innoculate a microbe into a rabbit to achieve a great discovery for humanity. Wisdom, therefore, consists precisely in this: to know where to stop in pushing a reasoning to extremes. This is what physiologists have sought and are seeking to do.
In any case, and as a last conclusion, Science ought not to be sacrificed. Now, the death-knell of science will have sounded when savants are prevented from pursuing their investigations on living beings. We who, in full confidence, hope for a happier and better humanity, will never resign ourselves to closing our laboratories, to burning our books. On the contrary, we are determined, every one of us, to continue our hard labours for the great good of the men of to-day and of the generations to come.
And when we speak of Science, we do not mean only the material benefits she scatters abroad; we think also of her power as a moral force. Material and moral conquests walk hand in hand. Science is the basis of the moral law. The universal consciousness of humanity grows greater by the acquisition of new truths. Each individual, by the very fact that he loves truth, has come to understand the moral ideal which should be ever before his eyes.
And then, in a just measure, full of pity for all suffering, but placing the suffering of man at a higher price than the suffering of the animal, we shall strive to make the respect of animal suffering accord with the search for the splendid and indispensable and divine TRUTH.