160 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. VI 



that my instructions were carried out. I do not see 

 what I can do beyond this, or how I can give Mr. Forster 

 any better guarantee than is given in my assurance that 

 my dislike to the infliction of pain both as a matter of 

 principle and of feeling is quite as strong as his own 

 can be. 



If Mr. Forster is not satisfied with this assurance, and 

 with its practical result that our experiments are made 

 only on non-sentient animals, then I am afraid that my 

 position as teacher of Physiology must come to an end. 



If I am to act in that capacity I cannot consent to be 

 prohibited from showing the circulation in a frog's foot 

 because the frog is made slightly uncomfortable by being 

 tied up for that purpose ; nor from showing the funda- 

 mental properties of nerves, because extirpating the 

 brain of the same animal inflicts one-thousandth part of 

 the prolonged suffering which it undergoes when it makes 

 its natural exit from the world by being slowly forced 

 down the throat of a duck, and crushed and asphyxiated 

 in that creature's stomach. 



I shall be very glad to wait upon Mr. Forster if he 

 desires to see me. Of course I am most anxious to meet 

 his views as far as I can, consistently with my position 

 as a person bound to teach properly any subject in which 

 he undertakes to give instruction. But I am quite clear 

 as to the amount of freedom of action which it is necessary 

 I should retain, and if you will kindly communicate the 

 contents of this letter to the Vice-President of the Council, 

 he will be able to judge for himself how far his sense of 

 what is right will leave me that freedom, or render it 

 necessary for me to withdraw from what I should regard 

 as a false position. 



But there was a further and more vital question. 

 He had already declared through Major (now Sir 

 John) Donnelly, that he would only undertake a 

 course which involved no vivisection. Further to 



