Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/783

Rh and woes. The case is controlled by the consideration of a superior interest. The freedom of a people is at stake, and the interests of a whole people at times exact the sacrifice of a few citizens.

The struggle of the scientific investigator against natural forces in some degree resembles the struggle of a people for its liberty. Material laws bind us on all sides, and to secure deliverance from them it is necessary to become acquainted with them. It is our liberty as against the things it is necessary to conquer; and it is not a dear bargain to buy this at the price of a few dogs and a few skinned frogs.

The sentimental spirits who are so much interested in the lot of our victims seem to believe that there is no more important occupation for them. We must undeceive them. There are more pains than joys among the men on this little terrestrial globe. Instead of busying themselves to prevent the researches which are being privately carried on in a few laboratories, let these charitable people make an effort to put down the slave-trade, of which negroes are the victims by thousands. Or let them endeavor to relieve the misery which prevails everywhere from Greenland to the land of the Hottentots. Let them try to suppress the terrible scourge of war, which has made a hundred thousand times more human victims than all the frogs, rabbits, and dogs that have been sacrificed by all the physiologists in the world. There is a task worthy of their activity.

We are apt, when we speak of pains and martyrdom, to exaggerate the sufferings of animals. There is no pain unless there is consciousness and attention to the pain. The more intelligent a being is, the more it can suffer. Unintelligent animals are incapable of feeling in its fullness the sensation we call pain. We can not form an idea of what a frog feels when we cut one of its nerves; probably we never shall know what it feels; but it appears to me that the pain it feels then is very vague and very confused. Compared to man, whose intelligence is so clear, the inferior animals are like automatons: most of their acts are half involuntary. They are not deliberate acts, maturely reflected out, but irresistible impulsions of which the actors have imperfect consciousness. These animals live in a kind of dream or half consciousness that excludes terrible pain. Their nerves are less excitable, and their brain is less susceptible of that clear perception of self without which pain can hardly be.

It is not without reason that we feel little remorse in martyrizing an animal of low degree in the series of beings. As we descend from man to the plant, intelligence diminishes, consciousness becomes more and more confused, and therefore the sensibility to pain is more and more obtuse. This is only a personal opinion, and it would be impossible to give a rigorous proof of it; but every day's observation seems to confirm its reality.

No one has a right to believe that a physiologist takes any pleasure in making animals suffer. For my part, I always feel a painful