IS NATURE CRUEL? 381 



by no means so important to any other animal. No other 

 animal needs the pain -sensations that we need; it is there- 

 fore absolutely certain that no other possesses such sensations 

 in more than a fractional degree of ours. What that fraction 

 is we can only roughly estimate by carefully considering the 

 circumstances of each case. These show that it is certainly 

 almost infinitesimal in by far the larger part of the animal 

 kingdom, very small in all invertebrates, moderately small in 

 fishes and reptiles, as well as in all the smaller birds and 

 mammals. In the larger of these two classes it is probably 

 considerable, but still far below that of even the lowest races 

 of man. 



A Possible Misconception 

 / 



It may be said — I fear it will be said — that this idea of 

 the lower animals suffering less pain than we suffer will be 

 taken as an argument in favour of vivisection. No doubt it 

 will ; but that does not in the least affect the actual truth of 

 the matter, which is, I believe, as I have stated. The moral 

 argument against vivisection remains, whether the animals 

 suffer as much as we do or only half as much. The bad 

 effect on the operator and on the students and spectators 

 remains ; the undoubted fact that the practice tends to pro- 

 duce a callousness and a passion for experiment, which leads to 

 unauthorised experiments in hospitals on unprotected patients, 

 remains ; the horrible callousness of binding the sufferers 

 in the operating trough, so that they cannot express their 

 pain by sound or motion, remains ; their treatment, after the 

 experiment, by careless attendants, brutalised by custom, 

 remains ; the argument of the uselessness of a large pro- 

 portion of the experiments, repeated again and again on 

 scores and hundreds of animals, to confirm or refute the 

 work of other vivisectors, remains ; and, finally, the iniquity 

 of its use to demonstrate already-established facts to physio- 

 logical students in hundreds of colleges and schools all over 

 the world, remains. I myself am thankful to be able to 

 believe that even the highest animals below ourselves do 

 not feel so acutely as we do ; but that fact does not in any 

 way remove my fundamental disgust at vivisection as being ? 

 brutalising and immoral. 



