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VIVISECTION. 
 
 Reprint from a letter to the Editor of the " Manchester Guardian.'''' 
 
 Sir, 
 
 It is interesting to notice in the correspondence on 
 vivisection that is going on in your columns, how the argument 
 tends to rage round the point that is really unessential : viz., 
 whether or not certain scientific knowledge has been obtained by 
 means of experiment on living animals. 
 
 To rivet attention on this side issue, as if it were the main prin- 
 ciple at stake, is the natural policy of the vivisector, for on the moral 
 ground what can possibly be urged by him which does not at once 
 open the door to the justification of all crime that can boast an 
 important object? It is well to keep in mind the fact that if the 
 point at issue were once admitted to be simply : whether the 
 gain in knowledge is great enough to counterweigh all the vast 
 expenditure of time and public money and talent involved in it, 
 and the loss to research of other kinds, then we should all be 
 committed to the following theorem : — " Atrocious cruelty 
 may be perpetrated if it can be shown to be for the advancement 
 of science; but this special licence for cruelty is granted only when 
 the object is scientific, and in no other case whatever — for reasons 
 (as Mrs. Carlyle says), ' which it would be interesting not to state.' " 
 
 It would certainly not be interesting to vivisectors to 
 attempt to explain why science should thus be selected for 
 particular favour by the State, and why that favour should be the 
 permission to practise terrible cruelties under certain (very lax) 
 conditions. That the cruelties of vivisection are terrible can, of 
 course, be proved up to the hilt from the works of the vivisectors 
 themselves. 
 
 It is true that every powerful interest since the world began 
 has set up the same claim to special privileges in crime, but why 
 we, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, should submit to the 
 tyranny is indeed hard to understand. The Church of the 
 Middle Ages committed crimes of cruelty in the name of her 
 special interests, but we all regard her conduct as the outcome of 
 
Wift 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 the darkest ignorance and superstition. Yet her claims were made in 
 the same spirit as that in which physiologists make their claims to-day. 
 The objects of the cruelty, we are assured, are so all-important. 
 What are the pangs of a few heretics (or a few rabbits) compared 
 with the salvation of human souls (or the welfare of human 
 bodies) ? When the groans of tortured wretches sounded in the 
 dungeons of the Inquisition — as the groans of creatures who have 
 offended neither Church nor State are sounding at this moment in 
 the laboratories of Science — the leaders of the Church never 
 dreamt that they were guilty of terrible crimes, and they easily 
 convinced the public that they were indeed servants of heaven. 
 The arguments of those who can practically demonstrate their 
 views are ever convincing. 
 
 But this permission by the State to use cruelty and crime for 
 special purposes, however good these purposes, ought surely to be 
 recorded as a tyrannical absurdity of the Dark Ages only. And indeed 
 no civilised nation now permits its religion to enforce her doctrinesby 
 rack and stake. By legitimate means alone may she make her con- 
 verts ; and this protection to the general safety is secured 
 by the same prohibition of licence in the case of all other institu- 
 tions and bodies and interests except one, and that one, strange to 
 say, is that which claims to have loosened the bonds of tyranny 
 and to have brought enlightenment to the whole human race ! 
 
 That so tyrannical, so unjust, so mediaeval a claim should be 
 made by Science herself, who was for so long the victim of super- 
 stitious oppression, is indeed a strange and discouraging fact. It 
 seems as if one form of tyranny were only destroyed to make 
 room for another ; and so on ad infinitum. Certain it is that 
 Science now stands in the path of progress, pointing us back to 
 mediaeval views as regards morality, setting up the very same 
 claim that was set up by Superstition herself — her predecessor in 
 power, — and demanding that her own particular ends and objects 
 shall be placed above all the laws of right and wrong, and shall be 
 allowed to override every consideration of justice and of mercy. 
 
 Science now claims to pursue legitimate ends by illegitimate 
 means, refusing to limit her operations to those that can be 
 
( 3 ) 
 
 followed by harmless methods, a limitation that every other pur- 
 suit is bound by law to respect. 
 
 The vivisector's claim becomes eloquent through its moving 
 appeal to our selfishness. By the torture of our defenceless 
 fellow-creatures, who have to find in us their Providence, we may 
 hope (so we are assured) to escape some of the sufferings entailed 
 upon our race by its sin and folly — which is another way of saying 
 that there is no such thing as a moral law in the universe. 
 
 Can any believer in such a law venture to assert that the human 
 race could possibly derive eventual good from deliberate evil ? Will 
 he dare to say that by the attempt to wring physical benefit out of 
 the anguish of our helpless dependents, we shall really be re- 
 warded by health of body without detriment to that of mind and 
 conscience ? 
 
 Supposing that some important discovery were made by this 
 method, is it conceivable that it would not cost us a hundred — nay, 
 a thousandfold in evil what it seemed to bestow of benefit ? 
 
 Let those who believe that right and wrong are real distinctions, 
 think for a moment of the stream of evil tendency set flowing by the 
 vast amount of torturing research which led to the discovery ; of 
 the influence on the minds and hearts of hundreds and thousands 
 of human beings ; of the inevitable temptations to push researches 
 further, and to test results of animal experimentation on human 
 subjects : let them remember the innate cruelty and selfishness of 
 the human heart, which cannot fail to be emphasised, if 
 not dangerously inflamed by familiarity with the idea of 
 this terrible outrage ; and then let them judge whether that 
 particular discovery (which, after all, might have been made by legi- 
 timate means) produces real and lasting benefit to the human race. 
 
 The moral loss, and therefore the loss to progress as 
 a whole, is absolutely beyond calculation. 
 
 But even if physical health alone be considered, there is 
 still nothing gained, but on the contrary everything lost, for it 
 can hardly be denied that the physical condition of a people 
 eventually follows their moral condition with absolute fidelity. 
 
 Indeed, the whole argument for vivisection and for its utility 
 seems to imply a denial of the unity of the creation and of the con- 
 
( 4 ) 
 
 sistency of natural laws, physical and moral. It is in truth, a most 
 unscientific doctrine. If vivisection be, in the profounder sense, 
 scientifically right, then it must follow that what we call the moral 
 law is scientifically ridiculous; and that to "do justice and love 
 mercy" would eventually bring destruction on a too chivalrous 
 nation, while cruelty and selfishness and abuse of power over the 
 weak, would, in the long run, be rewarded by peace and true well-being. 
 
 Are the supporters of the doctrine of salvation by vivisection 
 prepared to accept this view of the universal government? If they are 
 not so prepared, then they reduce themselves to logical absurdity. In 
 short, to discuss the moral or the philosophical aspects of the question 
 is to expose the hopeless weakness of the vivisectional position, and 
 it is for this reason that a pro-vivisector either consciously or instinc- 
 tively veers off from these really essential considerations and pins our 
 attention to points of technical detail, or disputes as to the utility 
 of particular experiments. While the physiologists can keep us 
 all wrangling over these matters, their work, of course, continues 
 unmolested. Even as I write animals of all kinds — dogs, cats, 
 pigeons, frogs, horses, besides the despised rabbits that one hears 
 so much of — are enduring anguish such as most of us scarcely 
 dare even to think of; and the practice is spreading rapidly year 
 by year. Surely for the committing of such deeds no profession 
 should hold a charter ; surely the people of England, who have 
 righted many wrongs and have always prided themselves on being 
 the first to render justice to the oppressed, will not fail much 
 longer to come to the rescue of the most piteous of all suffering 
 — suffering that is dumb and inexpressibly helpless, absolutely 
 without meaning to the victims, and through which shines not 
 one ray of faith or hope. It seems sadly late in the day to have 
 to urge upon English people that cruelty is a crime, whether it be 
 perpetrated by priest or prophet, by layman or professor, and that 
 the man of science has no more right than other men to pursue 
 his aims and objects — be they good, bad, or indifferent — by cruel 
 
 and atrocious methods. — Yours, &c, 
 
 Mona Caird. 
 Cassencary, Creetown, N.B., September nth, 1895. 
 
 S. E. Stanesby, 180, Brompton Road, London, S.W. 
 
 DUKE MEBi "CENTER 0* 
 HISTORICAL COLLECTin'. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/vivisectionletteOOcair