TREATMENT OF ANIMALS. 



569 



outh how grateful they ought to be to the As- 

 sociation for not troubling them with any such 

 superfluity of naughtiness this year. Now, it 

 may be observed, simply from the Association's 

 point of view, that the high problems of mind 

 and matter, at all events when handled by mas- 

 ters of exposition, are far more interesting than 

 the development of epiblast and hypoblast, and 

 much more likely to serve the objects for which 

 it is chiefly worth while to have opening address- 

 es at all. But this also is to be observed — and is 

 far more important — that men of science need 

 not and will not submit to purchase toleration by 

 renouncing the right they have, no less than all 

 other men, to discuss questions which lie at the 

 foundations of science, and are of the deepest in- 

 terest for all thinking persons. As on the one 

 hand they will not go out of their way to meet 

 the so-called challenges of people who have not 

 learned the elements of scientific method, so on 

 the other hand they will from time to time pause 

 in their special inquiries, when and where they 

 think fit, to consider the bearing of established 

 facts or probable hypotheses on the general con- 



ception of the world to be formed by a reason- 

 able man. We believe that no doctrine about 

 physical events, whether it be the conservation 

 of energy, natural selection, molecular theory of 

 gases, or anything else, can furnish proof or dis- 

 proof of any metaphysical doctrine, though it 

 may show in particular cases that something pro- 

 fessing to be metaphysics is really bad physics. 

 But it is perfectly idle to deny that the state of 

 physical knowledge at any given time does mate- 

 rially affect the notions of mankind, both physical 

 and metaphysical, about the order of Nature as a 

 whole. Else why has science, as it has always 

 had, determined enemies in those who are or 

 fancy themselves committed to keeping up par- 

 ticular sets of notions ? The pretense of ignoring 

 or deprecating these wider influences is unworthy 

 of men who serve knowledge with a whole heart. 

 Their business is to go straight onward, without 

 fear and without favor, neither courting nor 

 shrinking from speculative consequences, and 

 least of all affecting to be, alone among all men, 

 incompetent to discuss them. 



— Saturday Review. 



TREATMENT OF ANIMALS. 



By W. C. 



IN our youthful days in the early years of the 

 present century, little consideration was 

 given to a systematic kindness to animals. Horses 

 were overwrought without mercy, when ill-fed and 

 with wounds which should have excited compas- 

 sion. If they sunk down in their misery, they 

 were left to die, the chances being that, in their 

 last hours, they were inhumanly pelted with stones 

 by boys ; no one, not even magistrates or cler- 

 gymen, giving any concern to the cruelties that 

 were perpetrated. All that we have seen, with- 

 out exciting a word of remonstrance. A wretch 

 who habitually turned out his old, overwrought, 

 and half-starved horses to die on the town-green, 

 never incurred any check or reprobation. His 

 proceedings were viewed with perfect indiffer- 

 ence. People, while passing along in a demure 

 sort of way to church, would see a crowd of boys 

 pitching stones into the wounds of a dying horse, 

 and not one of these decorous church-goers en- 

 deavored to stop these horrid acts of inhumanity. 

 Like the Pharisees of old, they passed on the 



other side. Such within recollection is a small 

 sample of the unchecked atrocities of our young 

 days. Cats were pelted to death. Birds'-nests 

 were robbed. Dogs had kettles tied to their tails, 

 and were hounded to madness by howling multi- 

 tudes. Oxen were over-driven to an infuriated 

 condition, and their frantic and revengeful career 

 formed an acceptable subject of public amuse- 

 ment. 



Barbarous in a certain sense as these compara- 

 tively recent times were, there had already been 

 shown instances of a kind consideration for ani- 

 mals. The poet Cowper, it will be recollected, 

 wrote touchingly of the hares which he had 

 domesticated. Sir Walter Scott's tender regard 

 for his dogs has been recently noticed in these 

 pages. There was here and there a glimmering 

 consciousness that animals had some sort of 

 claims on the mercy of mankind. What strikes 

 one as curious is that society had retrograded 

 in this respect. The oldest laws in the world, 

 found in the early books of the Old Testament, 



