Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/11

 of the process which their natures are undergoing at both ends."

Of course, events, like the sudden development of physiological cruelties, do not take place without sufficient cause, and are not without some ostensible excuse on the part of those responsible for them. The common passion for science in general and for physiology in particular, and the prevalent materialistic belief that the secrets of Mind can best be explored in Matter, undoubtedly account in no small measure for the vehemence of the new pursuit of original physiological investigation. Then, for the instruction of students in agonizing experiments, other causes may readily be found. Young men at the age of ordinary medical students are, as I began by remarking, filled with curiosity and exceedingly empty of sympathy and pity. An eminent physiologist recently bore testimony to his surprise when a whole class of his pupils trooped out of his lecture-room, on purpose to see the assistant kill a creature which he had considerately intended should be dispatched out of sight before dissection. "I remained alone in my chair," he observed, "a sadder and wiser man," The same keenness of observation, or a memory of their own youthful insensibility, ought to teach all professors of physiology that they are indulging a maleficent tendency which already exists in their pupils’ disposition, when they invite mere lads of the Bob Sawyer type to watch their frightful experiments —the more frightful, so much, alas! the more attractive. And, further still, the proclivity of the time to youthful independence and raw incredulity of the experience of others, adds strength to the desire of students to see with their own eyes the phenomena which their instructors might almost, or quite, as thoroughly convey to them by means of descriptions und the extraordinarily perfect