THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 619 



ease ensues — slow, loathsome decay, sharp, convulsive torture, or 

 the burning to death of fever. 



All this is going on in the sea and on the land and has been 

 going on for geological ages upon a scale which baffles expression 

 in number or quantity. And this is God's ordering of Nature in 

 "perfect mercy." With it man has had nothing to do, since 

 there is every reason to believe that it existed ages before he 

 appeared upon the scene. Cardinal Manning goes on to tell us 

 that he believes in Genesis ; but there we are told, " And God saw 

 everything that he had made : and behold, it was very good." 

 According to any estimate of the enormity of physical suffering 

 which I have been able to find among anti vivisection writers, the 

 God who ordained such a scheme of Nature must be a monster 

 of cruelty. What is wrong with the equation ? The Creator ? 

 Nature ? Or the ideas of antivivisectionists ? Is it not true that 

 the religion of a hermit's hut, a lady's parlor, or a pope's palace 

 is apt to fit ill the problems of the wide world, and that we must 

 go to Nature to study even religion ? 



This travail of the animal creation is the " Slough of Despond " 

 for every philosophy but one. The biologist would agree with the 

 Creator in pronouncing it " very good." He too has gained in 

 some degree the divine point of view, and can see that out of the 

 struggle comes the quickening to nobler form and higher life, 

 and that, without this, life of any sort is scarce worth the living. 



Few who drive thoroughbreds ever pause to think of the flee- 

 ing for life, through geological epochs, the kicking and biting, the 

 hardship and training it has cost to give to the horse his beauty 

 and strength, since the time when the fox-sized Eohippus picked 

 his way among Eocene bogs. So with man, so with every form of 

 life that has attained any height of development. The price has 

 been great, but the gain is priceless ; and we would not give back, 

 if we could, all the suffering the world has felt and revert to vege- 

 tation and formless slimes. 



Examining a step further, is it not possible to imagine a more 

 merciful dispensation of Nature ? Suppose all the " cruel " car- 

 nivora should be exterminated or become vegetarian. Would 

 we not then have the animal millennium of certain sentimental 

 people ? No, far from it. The ensuing year would be the most 

 dreadful in the experience of the animal kingdom upon the earth, 

 and would end in death by starvation and disease of many more 

 animals than are now annually appropriated by the carnivora. 

 But suppose all manner of disease should be done away with — the 

 millennium of scientific medicine ; the struggle for food would be 

 only the more terrible, and it is more merciful to kill in a night, 

 even by pestilence, than in a month by starvation and the kicks 

 and butts of stronger animals. 



