150 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



perhaps, that he feels pain more or less acutely than 

 we do. As men have been acting on this assumption 

 for centuries, and constantly comparing experiences, 

 there has grown up an average standard of human 

 sensibility, by which we guide ourselves, and which 

 allows us to say in a rough way that such and such 

 a person is insensitive or hypersensitive. But when 

 we have to do with animals we lose ourselves at once. 

 The community of nature, from which we argued with 

 men, has sunk from an identity of species to a simi- 

 larity of type; the comparison of experiences by 

 which we corrected our conclusions is impossible. 

 We have nothing left to guide us except an analogy 

 with ourselves, which we know must be misleading, 

 and ' signs of pain,' which are of all indications the 

 vaguest. They are thus vague, because all that they 

 prove is that something is going on which the organ- 

 ism repels ; but they do not prove that there is any 

 consciousness of it, and if there is consciousness they 

 do not show the degree of feeling. This will be clearer 

 if we glance at what actually happens when an injury 

 of any kind is inflicted. 



(page 10.) " There may be all the signs of pain which 

 result from the general sensitiveness of the nervous 

 system ; but these prove that it is sensitive, and noth- 

 ing more ; they prove nothing about Feeling, of which 

 we know them to be quite independent. And, observe, 

 when it is said that a pithed frog (/. e., one whose 

 spinal marrow has been cut through, near its junction 

 with the brain), a pigeon without cerebral hemispheres, 

 or a chloroformed cat cannot feel, the statement is 

 not a conjecture. We arc on firm ground, because 

 we arc going upon human experience, assisted by 

 trustworthy analogy. We have the evidence of men 

 and women who can be questioned, and can tell us 



