Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/14

 world passion. which had its place and use in another form of society, is running to seed in the modern fashion of field sports, such as battues and pigeon matches. A new passion which scarcely had existence twenty years ago, is sprouting above ground and showing its bud in Vivisection.

Of course the motive of the sportsman, being usually merely spurt, contrasts much to his disadvantage with that which the vivisector requires us to believe in his actuating principle. The latter tells us that it is for the exalted purpose of alleviating the sufferings of mankind, which touch his tender heart to the quick, that he puts himself and his brute victims to the pain of his experiments; whereas the sportsman can only sometimes plead that he kills game for food or to clear the land of noxious creatures; and must usually confess that he hunts, or shoots, or angles for his own pleasure, health and amusement.

So far as the present writer's opinion is concerned, these latter motives do not justify such pursuits when they entail the death of animals neither hurtful to man nor wanted for his food; nor do any field sports seem to harmonize with the highest type of cultivated and humane feeling. But the men who follow them may plead at least the excuses of custom and of partial ignorance. Turn we, on the other hand, to those boasted motives of lofty and far-sighted philanthropy which are alleged to spur the Vivisector to his ugly work in his laboratory, where no fern-brakes or leathery bills, no fresh breezes or lancing streams, such as throw enchantment round the pursuits of the sportsman, are present to cast any glamour over the process of torture: and where no chance of escape on the part of the brute, or risk to his own person, may stir his pulse with the manly struggle for victory.