138 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



with the matter to enable them to realise and confidently 

 believe that the beneficent result will ensue. The know- 

 ledge has to be built up step by step, and the infliction 

 of pain on the animals is separated by an appreciable 

 lapse of time from the beneficent result which is none 

 the less the result which was aimed at, and the true con- 

 sequence of the pain inflicted. Putting aside for the 

 moment the fact that in these inquiries the pain is re- 

 duced to a minimum by the use of anaesthetics, it would 

 seem that we ought to be able to recognise that the 

 causing of a certain amount of pain to many hundreds 

 of rabbits, and even dogs, is justified by the consequent 

 removal of a far greater amount of pain from thousands 

 of men and animals who are saved from suffering at a 

 later date by the knowledge so gained. 



Lord Justice Moulton suggests two cases of the inflic- 

 tion of pain on animals for comparison. Suppose, he 

 says, a ship to arrive in port which (as might easily 

 happen to-day) is infested by plague-stricken rats ; there 

 are, perhaps, ten or twenty thousand rats on board. If 

 the rats escaped and landed they might (not certainly, 

 but probably) infect a whole city, even a much larger 

 area, with plague, and cause death and disaster to thou- 

 sands of human beings. Everyone will agree that the 

 owner of the ship would be justified in destroying all the 

 rats on the ship by sulphur fumes, or whatever other 

 painful method might be necessary to prevent even one 

 from escaping. A vast amount of suffering would be 

 inflicted on the rats in order to prevent a far greater 

 contingent amount of suffering. Now suppose that a 

 man, by infecting some hundreds of rats and other ani- 

 mals with plague, and by trying various experiments on 

 these animals with curative drugs, and by other opera- 

 tions upon them, can in all probability arrive at such a 

 knowledge of plague and how to check it as to enable us 

 to arrest its propagation, and so to save thousands, or 

 even millions, of human beings from this painful and 



