34 3 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE 3I0XTHLY. 



there are others who would not take their lives for pleasure. Past gen- 

 erations have approved of cock-fighting : there may be a future gen- 

 eration who will discountenance pigeon-shooting, and will regard that 

 as;e as barbarous which could witness without disgust the bleeding car- 

 casses of sheep hanging up in our most fashionable thoroughfares. 

 The spirit of the age and the feeling of society for the time seem to 

 determine what amount and kind of pain and suffering people will 

 allow to be inflicted on animals and what they will disallow. The very 

 valuable Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals does not 

 seem in its operations to offer a solution of the question. It would 

 seem that most of the examples of cruelty which the society publishes 

 are those where the public gain nothing by the act complained of, and 

 can therefore afford to prosecute. For example, I have heard " shame " 

 called on a carman who was endeavoring: to make a horse draw a coal- 

 wagon along the slippery pavement of Bond Street ; and this exclama- 

 tion came from a gentleman who on turning round might have seen the 

 quails and larks closely caged for his table, and the dying and writhing 

 lobsters waiting to end their miseries in a pan of boiling water. It- 

 would almost seem that the infliction of pain is allowable if approved 

 by the majority, and that it is not allowable and constitutes cruelty if 

 disapproved. In other words, cruelty depends upon the public estima- 

 tion of its utilitv or inutilitv. One is forced to arrive at this conclu- 

 sion, for the more one thinks over the rights of animals, or the ethical 

 question of our treatment of them, the less does it appear that any 

 considerations framed upon rights or morals have ever influenced man- 

 kind in its conduct. It is possible that some vague ideas respecting 

 man's dutv to animals mav be floating- through different brains, but 

 those ideas have never become concrete. 



It being admitted that man has a power, if not a right, over the 

 lives of the lower animals, the question arises, Where should this right 

 be limited, and at what point should our animal instincts, appetites, 

 and wants be restricted ? Utility or advantage seems to be the gauge 

 used by the majority of persons. The question, therefore, between 

 the anti-viviseetionists and their opponents appears to be a narrow one. 

 The former assert that the pain inflicted on animals is out of propor- 

 tion to the advantages obtained : Lord Coleridge savs as much in his 

 well-wrapped-up dictum. We, on the contrary, declare that the im- 

 portance of experiments can be shown to be overwhelming in compari- 

 son with the pain inflicted on animals for this and other objects. The 

 lofty phrase that " knowledge is unlawful knowledge if it is pursued by 

 means which are immoral " must be analvzed to understand its mean- 

 ing. As it is made applicable to vivisection, it is clear that " immo- 

 rality" means "giving pain to animals"; and his lordship's statement 

 would run, " All knowledge is unlawful if obtained by giving pain to 

 animals." Whence it follows that, as it is allowable to give pain to ani- 

 mals for various purposes, it is only unlawful to give pain when the pur- 



