“I will come in at some stage of your proceedings. I am bound first to Convocation—and am engaged at Kingston before 5.
“What I should like would be to thank Lord Shaftesbury; but this must depend on the time that I come, and that must depend on the exigencies of Convocation.
“Yours truly,
“A. P. Stanley.
(The Dean of Westminster.)
“April 25th, 1877.”
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“I am very sorry that through absence from home my answer to your note has been delayed. I shall not be able to take part in your meeting on the 27th, for I am not in a state of health to take part in any public meeting; but if I am at all able I should like much to attend it and hear for myself the views of the speakers. I have not expressed publicly any opinion on the question of Vivisection, being anxious at first to await the determination of the Commission, and then to see how the restrictions were likely to work.
“I confess that my own mind is leaning very strongly to the conclusion that there is no safe, right course other than entire prohibition. The more I think of it the more I dread the brutality which in spite of the influence of the best men will inevitably be developed in our young Experimenters, in these days of almost fanatical devotion to scientific research. It seems to me to more than counterbalance the physical advantages to our sick what may grow out of the practice of vivisection.
“And I am very sceptical about these physical advantages. I doubt whether the secrets of nature can be successfully discovered by torture, any more than the secrets of hearts. We have abandoned the one endeavour, finding the results to be by no means worth the cost. I am persuaded that we shall soon, for the same reason, have to abandon the other.