722 
Physiology and its Opponents. [December, 
dispute among cool moralists?” He further declares that : 
“ We have the spectacle of the anti-vivisedtion movement 
making for irrationality in ethics, empiricism in general 
thought, gross partiality in practice, falsehood in con- 
troversy, and the encouragement of the military spirit.” 
There is a further sneer against physiological research, 
common enough, but which does not come under Mr. 
Robertson’s searching analysis. Physiology is dubbed the 
“ coward science.” Physiological expediency is “ cowardly.” 
Let us for a moment look closely into the pseudo argument. 
The term coward is rightly and logically applied to the 
man who shrinks from danger which it is his duty to 
encounter, and to him only. But an adtion cannot be 
rationally called cowardly because it happens to involve 
no danger. “ Vivisedtion,” moreover, is often exceedingly 
dangerous. Pasteur, a man who never took the life of any 
creature for amusement, has often been in extreme peril in 
his researches on rabies. When collecting the virus from 
the jaws of a mad dog the slipping of a cord, or the slightest 
inaccuracy of manipulation on his part would, without fail, 
have involved a fearful death. But the employers of this 
phrase seek to justify it by the cavil that it is “ cowardly ” 
to inflidt pain or death upon beings which are unable to 
resist. It is hard to realise the full absurdity of this plea. 
The very essence of experiment in any science is that the 
substances adted upon shall have no power of withdrawing 
themselves from the intended readtion. 
But if physiological experimentation is “ cowardly ” 
because the subjedts cannot resist, ninety-nine-hundredths, 
at least, of the cases where man inflidts pain or death upon 
the lower animals fall in the same category. What resis- 
tance can the colt, the calf, or the pig make against the 
castrator ? How is the sheep to defend itself against the 
butcher, or the chicken, turkey, or duck against the poul- 
terer ? Can the pheasant, the partridge, grouse, or snipe 
withstand the sportsman ? Even the ox is so secured in the 
slaughter-house that escape or resistance is out of the 
question. Why, then, should the term “coward” be be- 
stowed upon the physiologist rather than upon the butcher, 
the sportsman, the castrator, or the drover, or all who 
torture or destroy animals for convenience, for amusement 
or for gain ? Every conceivable answer which can be given 
to this question is a demonstrable falsehood, save one. ^And 
that one is that the maenads of Vidtoria Street are very 
willing to dispense with science— in fadt, preferring igno- 
rance— but are not for a moment prepared to dispense with 
