[117] See Article in English Cyclopædia.
[118] See Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton. The whole passage breathes the true spirit of humanity and philosophy, and deserves to be quoted in full in this place: “Il y a surtout dans l’homme une disposition à la compassion aussi généralement répandue que nos autres instincts. Newton avait cultivé ce sentiment d’humanité, et il l’etendait jusqu’aux animaux. Il était fortement convaincu avec Locke, que Dieu a donné aux animaux une mésure d’idées, et les mêmes sentiments qu’à nous. Il ne pouvait penser que Dieu, qui ne fait rien en vain, eût donné aux animaux des organes de sentiment, afin qu’elles n’eussent point de sentiment. Il trouvait une contradiction bien affreuse à croire que les animaux sentent, et à les faire souffrir. Sa morale s’accordait en ce point avec sa philosophie. Il ne cédait qu’avec répugnance à l’usage barbare de nous nourrir du sang et de la chair des êtres semblables à nous, que nous caressons tous les jours. Il ne permit jamais dans sa maison qu’on les fit mourir par des morts lentes et recherchées, pour en rendre la nourriture plus délicieuse. Cette compassion qu’il avait pour les animaux se tournait en vraie charité pour les hommes. En effet, sans l’humanité—vertu qui comprend toutes les vertus—on ne mériterait guère le nom de philosophe.”—Elémens v. An expression of feeling in sufficiently striking contrast to the ordinary ideas. Compare Essay on the Human Understanding, ii., 2.
[119] History of Materialism.—We may here observe that Descartes seems to have adopted his extraordinary theory as to the non-human races as a sort of dernier resort. In a letter to one of his friends (Louis Racine) he declares himself driven to his theory by the rigour of the dilemma, that (seeing the innocence of the victims of man’s selfishness) it is necessary either that they should he insensible to suffering, or that God, who has made them, should be unjust. Upon which Gleïzès makes the following reflection: “This reasoning is conclusive. One must either be a Cartesian, or allow that man is very vile. Nothing is more rigorous than this consequence.”—(Thalysie Ou La Nouvelle Existence). La Fontaine has well illustrated the absurdity of the animated machine theory in Fables x. 1.
[120] See “Elémens de la Philosophie de Newton.”
[121] Suspecta mihi semper fuerit (he writes) ipsa hominis φιλαυτία.
[122] See Gassendi’s Letter, Viro Clarissimo et Philosopho ac Medico Expertissimo Joanni Baptistæ Helmontio Amico Suo Singulari. Dated, Amsterdam, 1629.
[123] Physics. Book II. De Virtutibus.
[124] See Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma. De Sobrietate contra Gulam. (“View of the Philosophy of Epikurus: On Sobriety as opposed to Gluttony.”) Part III. Florentiæ, 1727. Folio. Vol. III.
[125] Advancement of Learning, iv., 2. Bacon’s suggestion seems to imply that human beings were still vivisected, for the “good” of science, in his time. Celsus, the well-known Latin physician of the second century, had protested against this cold-blooded barbarity of deliberately cutting up a living human body. The wretched victims of the vivisecting knife were, it seems, slaves, criminals, and captives, who were handed over by the authorities to the physiological “laboratory.” Harvey, Bacon’s contemporary, is notorious (and, it ought to be added, infamous) for the number and the unrelenting severity of his experiments upon the non-human slaves, which, though constantly alleged by modern vivisectors to have been the means by which he discovered the “circulation of the blood,” have been clearly proved to have served merely as demonstrations in physiology to his pupils. But we no longer wonder at Harvey’s indifference to the horrible suffering of which he was the cause, when we read the similar atrocities of vivisection and “pathology” of our own time. From the cold-blooded cruelties of Harvey, who was accustomed to amuse Charles I. and his family with his demonstrations, it is a pleasant relief to turn to the better feeling of Shakspere on that subject. See his Cymbeline (i., 6), where the Queen, who is experimenting in poisons, tells her physician,
“I will try the force of these thy compounds on such creatures as