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 lower 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,” 
