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Physiology and its Opponents. 
sicrht of God, I believe all the passions are sisters, and 
the lust of cruelty is one which in all ages has had its safety 
valve, always in a virtuous form, always protefted by exist- 
ing governments, the same as other things, whether it was 
throwing Christians to tigers in the arena after a Pagan 
feast, or the Holy Inquisition, or viviseftion. Education 
and civilization have swept away all the other sorts except 
this last, and the day is not far distant when the world will 
be ashamed of this as of the others, and will look upon 
operators (whose names, addresses, and exploits are handed 
down to posterity in a directory published in Victoria 
Street, London) with the same eyes and feelings as “ they 
were executioners or inquisitors, and their memory will be 
as those.” , 
Surely a more foully and falsely libellous passage was 
never penned 1 It is a falsehood to say that experimenta- 
tion upon animals is a “ safety valve ” for the lust o 
cruelty.” 
The feelings of the experimentalist are just the same in 
the physiological as in the chemical laboratory. It is not 
his objedt to give pain, and in those cases where it might 
occur it is rendered impossible by anaesthetics. If a man 
take any delight in torture, he can indulge this feeling to 
the full without licenses, without anaesthetics, so long as 
his objedt is not scientific. So the “ passions ” are 
sisters ? What, then, of the passion for . profligate lying 
to which Mr. Robertson refers as a Bestianan charadteristic. 
Again physiological experiments are not “ protected by the 
British government : they are rendered all but impossible. 
Further, experimentation on animals if it be cruel, which 
we deny — is not the only “sort” which has not been swept 
away. “Sport,” in all its forms, exists pradtically un- 
challenged, and inflidts tenfold more pain upon animals than 
is done by “ vivisedtion.” As to the Vidtona Street Direc- 
tory, we know that the world will recover from its temporal y 
fit of madness; the names enrolled in that directory will be 
honoured as those who upheld the cause of science amids 
insult, obloquy, and positive persecution, whilst a wiser 
posterity will rank the Bestianan advocates with Caccim 
and Scioppius, or with the monks who tore Hypatia to pieces, 
and who destroyed the Alexandrian library. 
Vilification through every possible channel has been 
throughout a favourite weapon of the Bestianans. _ We have 
received anonymous letters _ in abundance, rich in insults 
and threats, but never containing anything worth the name 
of argument. 
