Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/45

Rh In Marie Bashkertseff’s 'Journal' is a striking passage which describes the effect of a Spanish bull-ﬁght. She says: 'I was able to maintain a tranquil air in full view of the butchery, carried on with the utmost refinement of cruelty. One leaves the scene slightly intoxicated with blood, and feeling desirous to thrust a lance into the neck of every person one meets. I stuck my knife into the melon I was cutting at table, as if it were a banderilla I were planting in the hide of a bull, and the pulp seemed like the palpitating flesh of the wounded animal. The sight is one that makes the knees tremble and the head throb. It is a lesson in murder.'

The moral distinction between heroism shown when suffering is witnessed, for the purpose of aiding the sufferer, and that evinced for the selﬁsh desire of individual gain or excitement, was strikingly exhibited by a German nurse, whom we sent on to the army during the Civil War in America. This frail-looking woman drifted on to the front, and after the Battle of Gettysburg, donning a pair of man’s boots, wading in pools of blood and mud, spent two days and nights on the ﬁeld of slaughter, drawing