414 retort — 1879. 



and in confidence is your strength: the vast fabric of Christian morals is in no 

 dano-er of being overturned by the discovery of a new chemical method in the la- 

 boratory, or of a hitherto undescribed animalcule. If noisy attacks are made in the 

 injured name of science, you have only to wait, and you -will see these attacks 

 repelled by the true leaders of science themselves, or, at the worst, by the next 

 generation. But if, leaving your secure fortress of defence, you come clown with 

 your rhetoric and your sentiments, your petitio prineipH, your ignoratio elenchi, and 

 all your familiar fallacies and trope°, thinking that with such weapons you can meet 

 on their own ground meu who have spent their lives in the study of science, then 

 no wonder if you suffer grievous defeat. Happy for you if you learn, like another 

 discomfited pilgrim, to betake yourselves to another 'weapon.' 



But I imagine that some of my audience are saying: ' This defence would have 

 been necessary before the Royal Commission made their report ; but when that was 

 made, and affirmed the necessity of physiological experiments, and the groundless- 

 ness of accusations of cruelty against physiologists, when an Act was passed which 

 licenses physiological laboratories, under the very restrictions which you had already 

 imposed upon yourselves, may we not regard the controversy as closed, and the 

 result as satisfactory ? ' 



I answer that I have taken up your time with this defence of physiological 

 experiments partly because I would fain help, however feebly, in the enlightenment 

 of the public conscience, but also because the result of recent legislation is not 

 satisfactory. 



Science does not work readily in fetters. A system of licenses and certificates, 

 numerous and complicated, obtained with trouble and delay, and revocable at the 

 will of a Minister who may, by the accidents of party, be at any time amenable to 

 anti-scientific influences, such a system adds serious difficulties to those already in 

 the way of experiments. 



Suppose, as au illustration, that certain persons opposed on various grounds to 

 learning, and especially hostile to Greek, had attacked the study of Plato. They 

 would point out the danger of modern ladies becoming as well read in his writings 

 as was Lady Jane Grey. They would show that the laxity of modern manners 

 was coincident with the popularity of the Symposium, and that the notorious 

 increase of infanticide was the result of the teaching of the JRepublic. Associations 

 for the total suppression of Plato would be formed, with hired advocates, and 

 anonymous letters, and ' leaflets,' spreading a knowledge of his most objectionable 

 passages. Scholars would be threatened with eternal punishment, and school- 

 masters with the withdrawal of their pupils. Then a Royal Commission would 

 be appointed— a great Latin scholar, a Whig and a Tory statesman (who, having 

 taken a B. Sc. degree at Oxford, would be impartially ignorant of Greek), the most 

 intelligent despiser of Plato who could be found, the master of a grammar 

 schoof on the modern side, and (perhaps the most efficient of all) a lawyer, who 

 knew nothing about Greek but hated cant. This Commission would take evidence 

 that the Platonic writings were not all immoral, that they had been quoted with 

 approval by Fathers of the Church, that they were of great importance to litera- 

 ture and philosophy, and even to the elucidation of the Sacred Writings. It would 

 also be proved that* the Platonic Dialogues were far less immoral than multitudes of 

 other widely circulated books, and even than a French novel which one of the 

 Royal Commissioners happened to be reading, and, lastly, that the morals of Greek 

 scholars, and of clergymen who had read Plato at college, were not obviously 

 degraded below those of other people. On the other hand, witnesses would depose 

 that a knowledge of Plato was of no consequence to a student of philosophy ; that if it 

 were, the text was in so corrupt a condition that no two scholars agreed as to a single 

 chapter ; and that, after all, philosophy was of no practical use, least of all to clergy- 

 men. Others woidd affirm that though they had never read a line of him, they knew 

 that his style was as vicious as his sentiments ; and perhaps some cross-grained 

 scholar might be found who, having once edited a Greek play, would declare that 

 all studies in Greek literature ought to be restricted to the tragedians, and that for 

 his part he had never opened any other authors and had never felt the want of 

 them. 



At last the Commission would report that there was no question of the value 



