142 ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION 



And this: 



" The insidious growth of selfishness is a disease 

 against which men should be most on their guard ; 

 but it is a grave though a common error to suppose 

 that the unselfish instincts may be gratified without 

 restraint. . . . The fatal vice of ill-considered benevo- 

 lence is that it looks only to proximate and imme- 

 diate results without considering either alternatives 

 or distant and indirect consequences. A large and 

 highly respectable form of benevolence is that con- 

 nected with the animal world, and in England it 

 is carried in some respects to a point which is un- 

 known on the Continent. But what a strange form of 

 compassion is that which long made it impossible to 

 establish a Pasteur institution in England, obliging 

 patients threatened with one of the most horrible 

 diseases that can afflict mankind to go --as they are 

 always ready to do --to Paris, in order to undergo a 

 treatment which what is called the humane senti- 

 ment of Englishmen forbids them to receive at home ! 

 What a strange form of benevolence is that which, in 

 a country where field sports are the habitual amuse- 

 ment of the higher ranks of society, denounces as 

 criminal even the most carefully limited and super- 

 vised experiments on living animals, and would thus 

 close the best hope of finding remedies for some of 

 the worst forms of human suffering, the one sure 

 method of testing the supposed remedies, which may 

 be fatal or which may be of incalculable benefit to 

 mankind ! l . . . 



" It is melancholy to observe how often sensitive 

 women, who object to field sports, and who denounce 

 all experiments on living animals, will be found sup- 



1 See also Seton-Thompson in the current Century Magazine, March, 

 1900. 



