THE ETHICS OF VIVISECTION. 345 



lower animals which has no place among experimenters. They speak 

 as if, standing on a higher platform and beholding all creatures from a 

 superior position, they could frame a code of laws which should have 

 due regard to the rights of animals, and govern our own conduct in all 

 our relations to them. This position is altogether fallacious : man can 

 not disconnect himself from the animal world, and can not define its 

 rights. It must, therefore, be abandoned as altogether untenable, and 

 the subject discussed from a totally different stand-point. Our relation 

 to the animal world can only in a very qualified sense be regarded from 

 an ethical point of view ; much in the same way as eating and drinking 

 may be spoken of as questions of morality when moral considerations 

 exert their influence over the amount and kind of food which we con- 

 sume ; this, however, can not hide from us the fact that the subject of 

 digestion is fundamentally a physiological one. 



The duty of man toward animals as an abstract question is from its 

 very nature insoluble ; it can only be partially answered on the grounds 

 of expediency, and these will vary according to age and nation. We 

 should, rather, ask what is our relation to the lower animal world, and 

 in what place in that relationship can moral considerations come into 

 force ? In endeavoring to form a judgment of this relationship we 

 must take facts as we find them, for the attempt at an explanation is 

 trying to solve the riddle of our existence, and leaves us still with "the 

 burden of the mystery of all this unintelligible world." 



In seeking a solution of such a question as our duty toward inferior 

 creatures, we must take into account man's animal nature ; he is of the 

 earth, earthy, and depends for his existence on the living world around 

 him. Like many other creatures, he has to prey upon the lower ani- 

 mals for his subsistence, and although he may not often, after the exam- 

 ple of some monsters of the deep, swallow small fishes by the mouthful 

 as in partaking of white-bait yet, like the other carnivora, he hunts 

 his prey and stealthily lies in wait for his victim. A large part of the 

 existence of the lower animals is employed in search for food, or in 

 protecting themselves from the assaults of their more powerful foes. 

 Their exquisitely keen senses are put into full play to seek out their 

 prey, or to place them on their guard against their more subtle enemies. 

 Paley could discourse on the design manifested in the claws, teeth, and 

 lithesome movements of the tiger, so well adapted for the capture of 

 its victim, and with equal discernment portray the form and slender 

 legs which enable the latter to escape its foe. It is necessary to picture 

 Nature 'as we find it, or we may fall into the error which we see per- 

 vading so many recent writings viz., that nearly all the miseries and 

 pain inflicted on the lower animals arise from their connection with 

 man. If we remember how many animals prey upon one another we 

 shall realize the vast amount of pain and suffering ever existing among 

 highly organized and sensitive creatures. None of us can measure the 

 agonies of the slow death of an animal who has escaped mangled from 



