Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/21

 freely to save us from fire or the waves, or perchance expire of grief upon our graves?

Nay, more; are we not altogether on a wrong track in arguing this question on the level to which we have descended? Are not Generosity, Self-Sacrifice, the readiness to suffer in our own persons rather than cause or permit others to suffer, the very rudiments of all virtue and all nobility of character? Are we to go back to the condition of savages-nay, rather of those
 * Dragons of the prime

Which tear each other in their slime," when we had boasted we had ascended to the rank of men, of Christians, of English Gentlemen? Is it a question for a man who aspires to be a brave or worthy, not to speak of a chivalrous or noble person, whether he may, within the limits of actual offense, spend his days in putting harmless animals on the rack for the benefit of himself and his kind? And is it our proper Teachers, those who are fit to guide and train young minds, and direct the tendencies of future generations, who are striving to move us to condone and approve such deeds by cant about the "Glory of Science," and by appeals to our miserable, cowardly fears of disease, and our selfish willingness to save "the smallest pain of a man at the cost of the torture of a hecatomb of brutes?"

To me it appears, I avow, that all this reveals a backsliding in feeling and moral aim almost measureless in the depth of its descent. The whole notion of Vivisection, as a legitimate exercise and mode of satisfying human desire of knowledge, seems to rest on a radically false conception of the proper ends of human life, and a no less erroneous idea of our relationship to those bumbler tribes of creatures