THE VIVISECTION QUESTION. 617 



education are naturally trained all the resources of quackery, 

 whose trade would be gone. And where free expression is accorded 

 to all alike, progress must be made in the teeth of ignorance too 

 dense to have any conception of its own depth, and in the face of 

 brawling charlatanry and screaming fanaticism. With nearly 

 half our people dying before or about the prime of life, this is the 

 situation. To teach ideas of cause and effect with reference to 

 matters of health and disease, to inspire at least a willingness to 

 heartily co-operate in efforts to control the causes of disease, our 

 public-school system seems well adapted. But even here there is 

 a serious tendency to hamper and restrict the proper teaching of 

 physiology. 



II. VIVISECTION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF RELIGION AND MORALITY. 



If vivisection is impious, immoral, or demoralizing, it must be 

 abandoned as a method of research, and further discussion on 

 grounds of utility is precluded. Hence this aspect of the subject 

 must receive our first attention. Scarcely a paper appears against 

 the practice of vivisection which does not contain solemn appeals 

 to the Deity. These are too sincere to be ignored. In fact, the 

 most active supporter of the agitation in England would confine 

 the discussion wholly to these grounds, and invites us to " leave, 

 then, utility alone, and all the weary controversy which hangs 

 upon it." With the help of God, it (the national conscience) will 

 yet abolish vivisection.* A recent expression of the American 

 Society is as follows : 



Resolved, That we, the American Antivivisection Society, 

 believe vivisection to be morally wrong ; to be distinctly opposed 

 to the intent of a beneficent Creator, who wills the happiness of 

 all his creatures ; that we should, as Christians, unite in every 

 effort for its suppression, and, as the best weapon of the Christian 

 is prayer, Resolved ,\ etc. 



The argument has been cast by Cardinal Manning into the 

 following syllogism: Truth of Nature must be sought only by 

 methods in harmony with the perfection of Nature's God. Mercy 

 is one of the perfections of God. Vivisection is not in harmony 

 with perfect mercy. \ Therefore truth must not be sought by 

 vivisection. How the worthy cardinal knows that vivisection is 

 not in harmony with God's perfect mercy he nowhere explains. 

 This is the all-important question. If this proposition is true, 

 vivisection is impious, and must be abandoned immediately, no 

 matter what its value to science, or utility to mankind. 



* Miss F. P. Cobbe. A Charity and a Controversy, London, 1889, p. 4. 

 f American Antivivisection Society Report, 1892, p. 19. 

 % Manning. Annual Address, Victoria Street Society, March 29, 1887. 

 tol. xlix. 49 



