Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/12

 models and diagrams now available, ‘There is nothing intrinsically blameworthy in this wish, which is perhaps an integral part of the scientific temperament. But its claims to be indulged, when indulgence means for a sensitive creature exquisite torture, and for the student such satisfaction as he may find in watching it, is another question.

Of the argumentative defences of Vivisection more must be said. The chief, I think, is a double-barrelled instrument, aimed at our selfishness (under the grandiloquent name of the Benefit of the Human Race) on the one side, and our bad conscience as regards various kinds of cruelty on the other. The latter, or tu quoque argument, which was set forth at large in a semi-jocose pamphlet by the assistant of M. Schiff, and published in Florence under the name of ‘Gli Animali Martiri,” refers us with a sneer to the cruelties of the Chase and the Shambles, and asks us whether, in a world where such things are done from the very lowest motives, it is worth while to dispute a few victims for those sacred Altars of Science which form the furniture of physiological laboratories. The answer to this appeal is not far to seek. One offence does not exculpate another, even if both be morally on the same level. But (as we have just seen) all other cruelties have some excuse in the ignorance or stupidity of those who inflict them, while those of the physiologist alone bear the treble stigma of being dune in the full light of knowledge, by singularly able men, and with the calmest forethought and deliberation. And while every other kind of cruelty is falling into disrepute, if not into disuse, this alone is rising almost into the rank of a profession, like a superior sort of butchery. As