Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/10

 affections, is indeed a portent of strange and threatening augury. It involves (as several writers in the daily press have not failed to remark) no less than the adoption of a moral theory of boundless application—namely, that the weak have absolutely no claims at all against the strong, but may be tortured ad infinitum even on the chance of discovering something interesting to the lordlier race; or for the purpose of better fixing an impression by the sight of their agonies than could be effected by the verbal description of a lecturer. "We ask, bewildered," says a writer in the Daily News, "how far then will these apologists of vivisection go in approving of the sacrifice of the weak for the sake of the strong? If it be proper to torture a hundred affectionate dogs or intelligent chimpanzees to settle some curious problems about their brains, will they advocate doing the same to a score of Bosjesmen, to the idiots in our asylum, to criminals, to infants, to women?

Truly this mournful spectacle of the perpetration of cruelty by those who best understand what is cruel, and of the contemptuous disregard of the claims of the brutes by those who have taught us that the brutes are only undeveloped men, is one to fill us with sorrowful forebodings for that future of our race which, from other quarters, seems to promise so fairly "The simultaneous loss," writes one of the deepest and most observant thinkers of the day, "from the morals of our 'advanced' scientific men of all reverent sentiment towards beings above them, as towards beings below, is a curious and instructive phenomenon, highly