LIV.
1.—“True science finds its own by kindlier quest.”
“Science is of the utmost importance to mankind, but the last degree of importance cannot be said to attach to all its minute discoveries, and where, as in physiology, the investigation becomes inhuman, there it ought to stop. It ought to stop for our own sakes if from no other motive, for the torturing of animals on the chance that it may suggest the means of alleviating some of our own pains helps to blunt those sensibilities which afford us some of our purest pleasures. Animals are not our equals in all things, but they seem to be at any rate our equals in the sense of pain. The want of imagination may deprive it in their case of some of its poignancy, but on the other hand they have none of the supports which we derive from reason and sympathy, from the tenderness of friendship and the consolations of religion. With them it is pure, unmitigated, unsolaced suffering. Our duties to them form a neglected chapter in the code of ethics, but we ought not to torture them, and there are many who will maintain that the obligation is absolute. Life is no doubt valuable, but it is not everything. It is more than meat, as the body is more than raiment, but it is not more than humanity. There are occasions on which it has to be risked, and there are terms on which men of honour and patriotism would hold it worthless. The doctrine that we may subject the lower animals to incredible suffering on the possibility that it may save ourselves from an additional pang is of a selfish and degrading tendency. It helps to lower the ‘moral ideal’ and to weaken the springs of heroism in human character. We owe it to ourselves to keep clear of this peril. Nature surrounds us with limitations. Here is one which all that is best and noblest in us sets up, and it is more sacred than those over which we have no control. We refuse to torture other sentient creatures in order that we may live.”—Dr. Henry Dunckley (Manchester Guardian, August 9th, 1892).
The above noble pronouncement, with its conclusion, is instinct with the spirit of true science (which repudiates with disdain and horror the hypocritical pseudo-science of a ghastly and demoralising study and pursuit of cruelty),—the true science which is one with love, because it refuses the acceptance of life itself on terms of outrage to love.
See Note LXI., 3.
4.—“... a keener lens of man’s own brain.”
“Observation is perhaps more powerful an organon than either experiment or empiricism.”—Richard Jefferies (“Story of My Heart,” p. 162).
Id.... It is well that some English physicists of the fullest scientific impulse and effort are revolted at the inhuman and bootless cruelty of the foreign medical schools which masquerades as scientific research. Is it not possibly something more than a coincidence that vivisectionists in general exhibit an aversion to the equality of woman, and that vivisection flourishes more unrestrainedly where her position and influence are less recognised; i.e., in plain words,—in a lower civilisation?
Mr. Lawson Tait says, with the indignation of a truly scientific mind at these methods of “science falsely so called”:—
“For one, as intimately and widely concerned in the application of human knowledge for the saving of human life and the relief of human suffering as anyone can be, or as anyone has ever been, I say I am grateful for the restrictive legislation. Let me give one brief illustration of my most recent experience in this matter as one of hundreds which confirm me in my determination persistently to oppose the introduction into England of what passes for science in Germany. Some few years ago I began to deal with one of the most dreadful calamities to which humanity is subject by means of an operation which had been scientifically proposed nearly two hundred years ago. I mean ectopic gestation. The rationale of the proposed operation was fully explained about fifty years ago, but the whole physiology of the normal process and the pathology of the perverted one were obscured and misrepresented by a French physiologist’s experiments on rabbits and dogs. Nothing was done, and at least ninety-five per cent. of the victims of this catastrophe were allowed to die.