8 JELLY-FISH, STAR-FISH, AND SEA-URCHINS. 



are incapable of suffering. Thus, for instance, when 

 the nervous continuity of the spinal cord is inter- 

 rupted, so that a stimulus applied to the lower 

 extremities is unable to pass upwards to the brain, 

 the feet will be actively drawn away from a source 

 of irritation without the man being conscious of 

 any pain ; the loAver nervous centres in the spinal 

 cord respond to the stimulation, but they do so 

 without feeling the stimulus. In order to feel 

 there must be consciousness, and, so far as our 

 evidence goes, it appears that consciousness only 

 arises when a nerve-centre attains to some such 

 degree of complexity and elaboration as are to be 

 met with in the brain. Whether or not there is 

 a dawning consciousness in any nerve-centres con- 

 siderably lower in the scale of nervous evolution, 

 is a question which we cannot answer; but we 

 may be quite certain that, if such is the case, the 

 consciousness which is present must be of a com- 

 mensurately dim and unsuffering kind. Conse- 

 quently, even on this positive aspect of the question, 

 we may be quite sure that by the time we come to 

 the jelly-fish — where the object of the experiments 

 in the first instance was to obtain evidence of the 

 very existence of nerve-tissue — all question of pain 

 must have vanished. Whatever opinions, therefore, 

 we may severally entertain on the vexed question 

 of vivisection as a whole, and with whatever feel- 

 ings we may regard the " blind Fury " who, in the 

 person of the modern physiologist, "comes with 

 the abhorred shears and slits the thin-spun life," 



