Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/75

Rh the scale of creation the growing fact of individual idiosyncrasy increases the uncertainty of erroneous method.

Therefore, the law of scientific research, which forbids the destruction of phenomena to be studied, is profoundly true.

If this law be not observed, intellectual activity may be gratified, self-conceit or love of novelty and excitement may be pandered to, the panic of fear in human beings may be worked upon, but the attainment of scientific truth in biology will be impossible.

It is thus seen that methods of biological research which involve cruel or destructive experimentation are both ethically unjustiﬁable and intellectually fallacious. They are unscientific methods, which will inevitably be abandoned as we attain to clearer views of that unity of truth in which the reconciliation of human conscience with intellectual activity becomes alone recognised as science.