A hundred years ago, whales were so abundant that 30,000 fishermen earned their living by whale-hunting. Now, our means of warfare against the cetacea have become so effective that whales can no longer defend themselves, and their number is decreasing every day to such an extent that we can almost foretell the moment when the whale will have ceased to exist.
In America, vast regions were overrun by immense herds of bisons. They have been massacred with such mad and blind ardour that if the Government had not finally taken some tardy and insufficient measures of precaution, the bison would be extinct too.
Aurochs, elks, chamois, bears have almost disappeared, whereas a century ago they were widely diffused in Europe. In proportion as man takes possession of the earth to cultivate it, he kills off every wild species and replaces them by domestic species where race loses its value. If this goes on, a time will come, unfortunately, when all-powerful man, having given himself up to the thoughtless destruction of everything not of immediate use to him, will have wiped off the face of the earth all save domestic animals. There will be hens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and guinea-fowls, sheep, oxen, donkeys, horses, cows. Perhaps for the pleasure of hunting, a few deer and a few hares will be preserved; but all wild species which cannot be reproduced in captivity will have disappeared, will no longer be there to delight our gaze. In France, the small birds are destroyed in rank fury, and every measure taken to protect them is inefficacious, thanks to the rage for destruction among the inhabitants. Asia and Africa once upon a time—when almost unknown and unexplored by Europeans—sheltered many a noble animal species to-day well-nigh extinct, and which, if strict measures of precaution be not speedily taken, will soon have disappeared for ever. The large monkeys, the ostrich, the giraffe, and especially the elephant, shun the haunts of man, for man is their ruthless enemy. It looks as though a hundred years hence, not one will be left.
It is not without sadness we think of that future civilisation, a brilliant one perhaps from several points of view, but monotonous and tame, as it will no longer possess this marvellous variety of different animal species which is as one of the smiles of nature. A pitiable uniformity will replace the varied forms which natural selection has taken thousands of years to bring forth; and then perhaps some tardy poet, in contemplation before the vast sheepfolds and poultry farms, where man will cultivate the species of use to him, will regret those far-off days when birds of all kinds sang in the forests, blending their gambols with those of the graceful animals which human civilisation will have annihilated.
There, I fancy, is a fertile subject for meditation, and interesting initiative for all those who have at heart the rights of animals, and, if I may express myself thus, the future of animality.
But the sight of a vivisection, the preparation of a laboratory experiment cannot be compared with the stupid and mischievous pleasures of angling and hunting. It is not a question of amusing oneself, of killing time, of diversion, of finding in the sight of blood or pain a recreation for boredom. It is quite another motive which animates the savant. He has ever before his mind the thought that his efforts are going to bring a little alleviation to the great sum of human suffering. If he inoculates a rabbit with tuberculosis, he cannot help thinking of all the wretched consumptives who are at that moment in the throes of death. He knows well that each time he discovers even only a particle of truth, that little bit of new truth is going to bring in its train some consequence which will bear fruit in the healing of suffering mankind.
It is with no light-heartedness that the physiologist causes the blood to flow, inoculates disease, injects poisons. I know the thought which animates my friends and my colleagues when they make their experiments: it is never without the most profound pity that we dare to take a healthy, gay, confiding animal, and give him chloroform, or inject a poison into him. This respect for pain, far from decreasing with age, on the contrary goes on increasing. Just as the doctor as he grows older becomes more and more sensitive to the sight of human suffering, so the physiologist who has performed many experiments understands more and more thoroughly the seriousness of pain. He feels all the weight of it: he has a greater responsibility. His morality has become higher and higher, his sensibility has increased. Often he repeats to himself this line of Virgil's:—
"Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco."
(Knowing misfortune, I teach the succour of the wretched.)
It would, therefore, be altogether unjust to reproach the experimenter with barbarism or inhumanity; for more than any one else does he possess the sentiment of the immense misfortunes of humanity, and if he resigns himself to experimentation, it is because he sees behind his experiment an alleviation of the sufferings of both man and beast.