Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/1219

 tions of some of these fallacies (which I have here rather attempted to formulate and classify than to refute, or even fully discuss), and so exhibit in one view the case of the opponents of vivisection. It is briefly this—

That while we do not deny the absolute right of man to end the lives of the lower animals by a painless death, we require good and sufficient cause for the infliction of pain.

That the prevention of suffering to a human being does not justify the infliction of a greater amount of suffering on an animal.

That the chief evil of the practice of vivisection consists in its effect on the moral character of the operator; and that this effect is distinctly demoralising and brutalising.

That hard work and endurance of privations are no proof of an unselfish motive.

That the toleration of one form of an evil is no excuse for tolerating another.

Lastly, that the risk of legislation increasing the evil is not enough to make all legislation undesirable.

We have now, I think, seen good reasons to suspect that the principle of selfishness lies at the root of this accursed practice. That the same principle is probably the cause of the indifference with which its growth among us is regarded, is not perhaps so obvious. Yet I believe this indifference to be based on a tacit assumption, which I propose to notice as the last of this long catalogue of fallacies—

13. That the practice of vivisection will never be extended so as to include human subjects.

That is, in other words, that while science arrogates to herself the right of torturing at her pleasure the whole sentient creation up to man himself, some inscrutable