MEDICINE AND MORALS 



ness insensibility may be developed which 

 will tend to the ignoring and toleration of 

 cruelty? Is there not a permanent neces- 

 sity for missionary work against cruelty, 

 such as only exquisitely sensitive people can 

 perform? Are not the majority of us in 

 danger of becoming brutes should such 

 ministry be taken away? We have heard 

 it earnestly urged as a sufficient reason for 

 forbidding vivisection in every form that 

 vivisection dulls human sensibility, the 

 assumption being that whatever dulls sensi- 

 bility in however slight degree is inevitably 

 wrong. Such a view has some justification, 

 though no doubt the contention may easily 

 be carried too fa"r. Where the line shall be 

 drawn between these two antagonistic 

 tendencies, between the too great heedless- 

 ness of pain and the too ready heeding of 

 it, is a calculus which only men of medical 

 education and experience can work out. 



Again, suppose that a measure of training 

 in insensibility is to be commended, do we 

 need, is it admissible, artificially to create 

 pain for the mere purpose of hardening peo- 



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