EDITOR'S TABLE. 



75 1 



ilization and enlightenment, men are yet 

 very much barbarians, and the cruel in- 

 stincts of the savage still animate many 

 a nominal Christian. The humaner 

 feelings are beginning to assert their 

 influence; but they encounter fearful 

 odds in the struggle with hereditary 

 impulses to violence, and that artistic 

 refinement of brutality which seeks en- 

 joyment in the suffering of inferior 

 creatures. 



Yet, like every thing else, the kindly 

 sentiments toward animals may be car- 

 ried to extremes and run into absurd- 

 ity. We live in a world, or at least in 

 a stage of it, in which suffering is not 

 to be escaped. By the constitution of 

 things, it must be inflicted. Older than 

 the Decalogue, older than man, as old 

 as the earliest life, is the divine ordi- 

 nance of Nature to kill or be killed. 

 The necessity of mutual destruction was 

 instituted in the nature and with the 

 first appearance of living things. Not 

 only was death the doom of all, but 

 death by violence and mutual ruthless 

 slaughter was the necessary and normal 

 result of the arrangement. The world 

 has advanced through agony, and, in its 

 unfolding, the price of higher enjoy- 

 ment has ever been intenser pain. As 

 the nervous system of the animal series 

 has become more voluminous, delicate, 

 and complex, the capacity of suffering 

 as well as pleasure is increased ; and, 

 in the most perfected being, the very 

 flowering of genius opens new suscep- 

 tibilities for painful emotion of which 

 natures with lower gifts know nothing. 

 Pain, therefore, is not to be escaped. 

 Each sentient creature by the law of 

 its being strives to avoid it, and it is 

 incumbent upon all to lessen it as far 

 as possible, but it is wrought into the 

 inexorable economy of things, and not 

 to recognize and deal with it as any 

 other fact is irrational. 



It hurts insects to be killed, but we 

 must kill them in self-defense. We 

 destroy the lower animals for our 

 food, but there is a deeper reason for 



being rid of them, because, if suffered 

 to multiply unchecked, they would 

 put an end to us. It will therefore 

 not do to yield in this matter to the 

 pure dictates of sentiment. There is 

 an infliction of pain that is reasonable 

 and necessary, and one of the cases of 

 it is afforded by the physiologist who 

 makes painful experiments upon the 

 lower animals to extend the knowl- 

 edge of his science. As the exigen- 

 cies of diet may require us to slay an 

 ox, so the demands of scientific truth 

 may require us to sacrifice a rabbit or 

 a dog. In both cases the pain pro- 

 duced should be the least possible, but 

 in both the ends are reasonably held to 

 justify the infliction. Yet there have 

 been many and earnest protests against 

 vivisection, or experiments upon liv- 

 ing animals, as an inexcusable cruelty ; 

 and physiologists have recently been 

 the subjects of a fresh assault by sen- 

 timental writers in the London literary 

 press. The arguments in favor of the 

 practice are so convincingly stated, and 

 the objections to it so well refuted, in 

 a paper by Dr. Foster, of Cambridge, 

 that we reproduce it in the present 

 number of the Monthly. It will well 

 repay perusal. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



English Psychology. Translated from the 

 French of Theodore Ribot, 1 Professor 

 of Philosophy in the Lycee at Laval. 

 New York : D. Appleton & Co. 328 pp. 

 Price, $1.50. 



The study of the human mind is beyond 

 all doubt one of the most sublime and im- 

 portant, as it is certainly one of the most 

 difficult, of all studies. So great is its inter- 

 est that it has fascinated philosophers for 

 thousands of years, and so great is its diffi- 

 culty that of all branches of inquiry it has 

 proved least amenable to investigation, and 

 has led to the most discordant conclusions. 

 From the beginning of speculation it has 

 been pursued by a method that has failed to 



1 Pronounced Rebo. 



