602 Physology and its Opponents. [October, 
and confidence ” or of satisfaction over comfortable quarters ; 
whether the faithfulness and affection of the pet dog to its 
owner is not compensated by its spite against all other 
beings, human or infra-human, which it is capable of injuring 
or at least annoying. 
But amidst all the Victoria Street cheers which Miss 
Cobbe’s fervid periods may call forth let us listen to the 
calm, logical comments of Mr. Robertson. “ All this,” says 
he, “ is transparent enough to those ruthless natures which 
are capable of exploring the quivering frame of this passage 
with the forceps and scalpel of dispassionate analysis. Miss 
Cobbe is a typical anti-vivisectionist in that she does what 
we have said the majority (of mankind) do not do — carry her 
sympathy with animals to the extent of attributing to them 
— or some of them — a moral and emotional nature closely 
resembling our own. She lets it appear very plainly that 
she is moved by purely personal sentiment as distinguished 
from an impartial sense of justice. Her dog and cat are a 
great deal to her, and it is the idea of their suffering which 
excites her. The exigencies of propaganda force her to be 
so far consistent as to protest against all vivisection and to 
deprecate ‘ sport ; ’ but it is tolerably plain that if it were 
only dull reptiles, and wild rats and rabbits, and the heavy 
beasts of our pastures that were vivisected she would not be 
greatly concerned. That is, she is not defending a ‘right ’ 
inherent in sentient things as such ; she is doing special plead- 
ing for some of them for which she has a special liking. Her 
contention virtually is that cats and dogs have a better right 
to be spared than rats and rabbits, because they have the 
greater capacity for attachment to [some of. I us. Now we 
have seen that we admit the ‘rights” of men because we 
assume them to feel morally and physically as we should do 
in their place; but Miss Cobbe’s argument to be relevant 
from that point of view would have to allege that we have 
cause to believe that dogs and cats under vivisection will 
feel both morally and physically as we do. We are entitled 
to believe, on the contrary, that their sensitiveness to pain 
is less, and that they have no moral feelings analogous to 
what a man’s would be under the circumstances.” 
These sentences call for a few remarks. Dog-worship, or 
cynolatry as our contributor, Frank Fernseed, calls it, is the 
very backbone of the Bestiarian movement. Strange that 
an animal which owes its popularity mainly to the faCt that 
it is willing to be the accomplice of the human species in 
cruelty — not to speak of another vice — should play such a 
part ! 
