CHAPTER VIII
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.