Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/18

 creature has an indefensible claim to be spared pain merely because it is sentient, involves the corollary that the claims of the humblest of such creatures must begin somewhere, and cannot be wholly and finally abrogated,—as they would be on the hypothesis that we may push our right to take their lives to the ultimate and indefinitely more remote point of putting them to torture. To make of the existence of a creature such a misfortune and curse as that it should seem better it had never been born,—this is assuredly far beyond the exercise of any prerogative which man can claim for himself, either in virtue of any inherent superiority of his nature, or of any privilege he can conceive to have been granted to him by the Creator.

To affirm, then, as vivisectors are wont to do, that they would freely "sacrifice a hecatomb of dogs to save the smallest pain of a man," is merely an expression of contempt for the rights of beings feebler than themselves, and which are not yet advanced by evolution to the lordly class of "Bimana," or the genus "Homo." What are the moral grounds, we ask, for this astounding new principle of Race Selfishness? What is there in Man, either considered only us our fellow-bimanous animal, or as an immortal being whose body is but the garment of his soul, which should make his trifling pain so inexpressibly solemn a matter, and of another animal, no less physically sensitive, insignificant by comparison? Of course we may naturally feel a little more spontaneous sympathy with a suffering man than with a suffering horse. But what is the ethical reason why we should prefer the pain of a thousand horses to that of a single man? Sir Henry Taylor has written noble lines on this matter, going deep into the heart of the question: