210 
SCIENCE. 
THE TWO KINDS OF VIVISECTION— SENTI" 
SECTION AND CALLISECTION. 
Professor Burt G. Wilder, M. D., of Cornell Univer- 
sity, writing to the Medical Record , says: Is it not time tor 
the distinct verbal recognition of the difference between 
painful and painless experimentation upon animals? 
All well-informed persons are aware that the vast major- 
ity of vivisections, in this country at least, are performed 
under the influence of anxsthetics ; but the enthusiastic 
zoolaters, who desire to abolish the objective method of 
leaching physiology, practically ignore this fact, and dwell 
chiefly upon the comparatively infrequent operations which 
are attended with pain. 
Having read the arguments upon both sides, and had 
some correspondence with leaders of the anti-vivisection 
movement, I have been led to think that the discussion may 
be simplified, and a right conclusion sooner reached, if we 
adopt new terms corresponding to the two kinds of experi- 
mentation. 
To use words with no warrant of ideas may be foolish, 
but it is not necessarily a mark of wisdom to refrain from 
the employment of terms which have a real significance. 
Let us consider an analogous case. Aside from color 
and size, the cat and the leopard are almost identical, and 
are commonly regarded as two species of one genus. Sup- 
pose a community to be unacquainted with the cat, but to 
have suffered from the depredations of the leopard, which 
they call felis. Now, suppose some domestic cats to be in- 
troduced and to multiply, as is their wont. In the first 
place, for a time at least, it is probable that the same name, 
fells , would be applied to the smaller animal, with perhaps 
a qualifying word. In the second place, should there be 
certain persons, both devoid of interest in the cats and filled 
with pity for the mice devoured by them, is it not likely 
that they would endeavor to include the cats under any ban 
which might be pronounced against the leopards? Would 
they not be apt to succeed, especially with the more ignor- 
ant and impressionable members of the community, so long 
as they could assert without contradiction that the “mouse- 
eater” was only a felis upon a smaller scale? Would not 
even the reputation of the leopards suffer by reason of the 
multitude of the cats thus associated with them ? In short, 
would full justice be done to either animal until their dif- 
ferences of disposition should be admitted to outweigh their 
likeness of form and structure, and be recognized by the use 
of distinctive names? 
In like manner there are those who ignorantly or wilfully 
persuade themselves and others that all experiments upon 
animals are painful because some of them are now, and most 
of them were in former times ; also, that painful experiments 
are common because vivisection in some form is generally 
practiced. It is all vivisection , and as such it is “cruel, re- 
volting, or brutalizing.” 
Having waited long in the hope that some candid discus- 
sion of the whole subject might contain the needed terms, 
I venture to suggest that painful vivisection be known as 
sentisection , and painless vivisection as callisection. The 
etymology of the former word is obvious; the distinctive 
element of the latter is the Latin callus , which in a derived 
sense, may denote a nervous condition unrecognized, strict- 
ly speaking, by the ancients. 
some idea of the relative numbers of callisectionists and 
sentisectionists may be gained from the fact that I have 
been teaching physiology in a university for twelve years, 
and for half that time in a medical school ; yet I have never 
performed a sentisection, unless under that head should be 
included the drowning of cats and the application of water 
at the temperature of 6o° C. (140° F.), with the view to 
ascertain whether such treatment would be likely to suc- 
ceed with human beings. 
I think that even elementary physiological instruction is 
incomplete without callisection, but that sentisection should 
be the unwelcome prerogative of the very few whose natural 
and acquired powers of body and mind qualify them above 
others to determine what experiments should be done, to 
perform them properly, and to wisely interpret the results. 
Such men, deserving alike of the highest honor and the 
deepest pity, should exercise their solemn office not only 
unrestrained by law, but upheld by the general sentiment 
of Ihe profession and the public. 
FEELING AND FUNCTION AS FACTORS IN 
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.* 
By Lester F. Ward, A. M. 
Sociology is now recognized as a legitimate branch of 
Anthropology. 
The great French philosopher, Auguste Comte, although 
the first to introduce the word Sociology , did not venture to 
use this term extensively himself, but preferred the expres- 
sion Social Physics, which must therefore be accepted as the 
true definition of sociology as intended by the father of the 
science. 
It is important to remember this fact and to preserve 
throughout this necessary connection between social 
science and physical science. This, however, has 
not always been done. The phenomena of human 
development, may be contemplated from two quite dis- 
tinct points of view, only one of which has thus far 
received sufficient attention. These two points of 
view are those respectively of feeling and of function, 
and it is the first of them that has been neglected. Accord- 
ing to the usual method of approaching such questions, 
man is regarded as a being requiring for his preservation a 
certain amount of nourishment and for his perpetuation 
the begetting of offspring. The two essential factors from 
this point of view are the functions of nutrition and repro- 
duction. Around the first of these cluster the industrial 
activities, and upon the second is founded the family. Out 
of these grow all the later and more complex characteristics 
of civilization. According to the other method of contem- 
plating human development, man is regarded as a being en- 
dowed with feelings. These feelings are in the nature of 
desires. The existence of such desires involves the effort 
to gratify them, which effort in turn gives rise to human ac- 
tivities. The condition of society at any time is the result 
of these activities, just as from the point of view of func- 
tion, nutrition and reproduction are the two primary es- 
sential factors; so, from the point of view of feeling, the 
gustatory and sexual appetites are the primary and essen- 
tial factors. The advantage of the latter method over the for- 
mer is that it affords, as the otherdoes not, a scientific basis 
for the investigation of the laws of anthropology. The ac- 
tion of an organism in seeking the satisfaction of a desire 
finds an exact parallel in the action of a chemical molecule 
in seeking combination with others, or that of a column of 
air in rushing in to fill a vacuum. The desires of individ- 
uals constitute true forces, identical in all respects with the 
physical forces which other sciences deal with, and all 
branches of anthropology, including that of sociology, at 
once take their places as true sciences. This antithesis 
may perhaps be rendered more striking by considering 
function as the object which nature seeks, and feeling as 
that which man seeks. The object or end of nature is the 
preservation and perpetuation of existing life ; that of man, 
and of all beings endowed with feeling, is the satisfaction 
of existing desires. The former is objective and constitutes 
a biological process ; the latter is subjective, and is a moral 
or sociological process. 
Properly understood these precesses possess no natural 
or necessary relation to each other. It is easy to imagine a 
person wholly destitute of taste. Indeed such cases are on 
record. The pleasure derived from the contact of nutri- 
tious substances with the tongue and palate is obviously 
distinct from the benefit which it confers upon the system 
after digestion. Such a person as we have supposed would 
none the less need food because he had no desire to par- 
take of it. 
It is still more easy to conceive of a total absence of the 
sexual instinct, and this is a much more common patho- 
logical condition found in practice. Here the feeling is 
still more obviously distinct from the function. 
Why then do these desires and their functional results so 
universally accompany each other ? The answer is that this 
apparently “ pre-established harmony” of things having no 
necessary relation or resemblance has been the result of 
natural adaptation. 
The agreeableness of the acts of nutrition and reproduc- 
tion exists because without it nutrition and reproduction 
could never be secured. The existence of these pleasures, 
* Read before the A. A. A. S., Boston, 1880. 
