Vivisection . 
[July, 
brother or I must kill you ” is his motto, and too often, if 
unable to overcome his opponents in argument, he assails 
their private characters. Now when “ world-betterers ” 
combat any real evil— of which there is a tempting assort- 
ment awaiting their attention — this fanatical zeal may 
sometimes do good service ; but when they seek to fetter the 
development of Science, and thereby to check the progress 
of the world, they must be encountered by a determination 
as stern as their own. Whilst scorning to borrow their un- 
fair weapons, and whilst giving them full credit for sincerity 
of a certain kind,— a credit which they have to share with 
Thugs and Inquisitors, — we must refuse to concede even a 
hair’s-breadth of their demands. We know that certain 
accusations are supposed to require no evidence, and that to 
defend the accused is an invidious task. Such was in former 
ages the case with charges of heresy and witchcraft ; so it 
is now with charges of cruelty to animals. Yet though cer- 
tain to be misrepresented, we must proclaim the outcry 
raised against vivisection to be the outcome of misconception 
and inconsistency. 
We will first examine the cases in which man claims the 
right to inflict pain upon the lower animals. Of these there 
seem to be five classes, namely— 
1. In self-defence. 
2. In order to obtain articles of real or supposed neces= 
sity. 
3. In compelling animals to obey his will. 
4. In the pursuit of amusement. 
5. In the pursuit of knowledge. 
The pain thus inflicted may vary in degree from slight 
uneasiness, or from a momentary shock, to intense and pro- 
longed torture, it includes terror, distress, and exhaustion, 
as well as the direCt aCtion of mechanical or chemical agents 
upon the victim. It includes death, for — except by the use 
of certain narcotic poisons — death cannot be induced with- 
out some kind of pain. These different cases we will now 
consider, enquiring if, and in how far, man is justified in the 
line of conduCt which he generally, if not universally, adopts 
towards his “ poor relations.” We shall not seek to cut 
asunder the knot by the assumption that animals, even the 
lowest, are utterly incapable of feeling,* or by declaring, 
with Prof. Mivart, that, though sentient, they are uncoil- 
* Lamarck grouped together certain of the lower forms of life as “ animaux 
apathiques .” We doubt whether even vegetables are absolutely incapable of 
feeling. 
