344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



customers pay him as much as he can, when circumstances give him 

 the power of demanding unusual prices. An elevation in social mo- 

 rality would make conduct of this kind less common than it is, and 

 would inevitably have some influence in restraining the greed of great 

 monopolies. In America, with its limited past, wealth has an excess- 

 ive social power, its pursuit is the business of nearly all the strongest 

 intellects, and its marvelous growth in the country at large from year 

 to year constantly tends to make it a more and more decided object 

 of ambition. The ideal of a vast number of the people is wealth, and 

 scarcely any price is thought too great to pay for it. If any improve- 

 ment of this ideal is possible, it lies with teachers of morality and 

 right thinking to effect it. Whether on the school-rostrum or the plat- 

 form, in the pulpit or the editorial chair, or, above all, in the home, the 

 aim of life should be taught to lie rather in the development of heart 

 and conscience than in the accumulation of vast estates more in the 

 growth of honor and manliness than in the growth of those arts which 

 gather wealth but stunt and paralyze the faculties of true enjoyment. 

 The low idea of the subordination of life to the means of living is at 

 the root of most of the problems of property. One of the chief im- 

 pulses in the pursuit of wealth is the desire of obtaining public admi- 

 ration and applause ; if these are intelligently awarded much will be 

 done to curb the unscrupulousness of those who gather together a 

 great deal more than they can enjoy, in some cases heaping up sums 

 far outbulking the accumulations of any previous age. And much 

 will be done toward making efficient, in the prevention or punish- 

 ment of the abuses of great properties, such legislation as may be ap- 

 plicable. 



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THE ETHICS OF YIVISECTIOK 



By Dr. SAMUEL WILKS. , 



SINCE many writers opposed to the practice of experiments on ani- 

 mals have based their objections entirely on moral grounds, and 

 thus made the question of vivisection an ethical one, I have been 

 anxious to know what laws they have discovered for our guidance on 

 this vexed subject. They discourse on cruelty, on immorality, and on 

 the rights of animals ; but these expressions are so vague that they 

 fail to afford any basis for legal or public action, or, if there be any 

 attempt at definition, it is with the object of making these terms con- 

 form to a foregone conclusion on the very point under discussion. 

 Thus it is constantly asserted that physiologists feel at liberty to tort- 

 ure animals at their pleasure, without regard to the " higher dictates 

 of humanity" or to the "laws of morality." It is thus implied that 

 there exists among the public some principle of conduct toward the 



