A GREAT LAWYER'S OPINION 137 



mission reports, and its conclusions will command the very 

 greatest respect, not only because its members include 

 eminent lawyers, medical men and independent repre- 

 sentatives who were ready to give an impartial mind to 

 the inquiry, but also because it is obvious that the very 

 greatest care has been taken to obtain the fullest evidence 

 from both sides. 



Sir James Fletcher Moulton, one of the Lords Justices 

 of the Court of Appeal, has made a statement to the 

 Commission in defence of scientific experiment which is 

 a masterpiece of persuasive reasoning and lucid exposi- 

 tion. It is somewhat remarkable that there have been 

 and are persons in high judicial office who have shown 

 active hostility to the cause of science and knowledge in 

 this matter owing to their want of acquaintance with 

 the facts and their readiness to be carried away by blind 

 emotion. Lord Justice Moulton, on the other hand, is 

 a scientific man by education and early training, and has 

 come forward to state in a plain and reasonable way what 

 is the view of the matter which commends itself to him. 

 There is reason to hope that his view will be approved 

 by those who read what he says calmly and without bias. 

 His chief point is that many people are willing to admit 

 that it is right to destroy animals (even by methods 

 which inflict great pain on them) when an immediate 

 result of a good and useful kind is to be obtained as 

 when we kill animals to serve as food or in order to pre- 

 vent them from injuring us or destroying our crops and 

 stores. Yet these same persons, he points out, by some 

 defect of imagination are unable to see that the gaining 

 of pain-saving or disease-preventing knowledge as the 

 result of inflicting pain and death on a small number of 

 animals justifies us in permitting that pain and death. 

 They are unable to admit the justification because the 

 knowledge and its practical application does not directly 

 and at once follow upon the first commencement of the 

 search for it, and they have not sufficient acquaintance 



