Page:The moral aspects of vivisection (IA 101694999.nlm.nih.gov).pdf/4

 would proceed peacefully in 1875 under Temple Bar were John Mitchel’s head to be exhibited on the cornice. The influences of civilization, of religion, of culture—in short, of all kinds, mental and moral—have softened, like the rain of heaven, the crust of our dry, hard world, and there is every reason to hope that, unless arrested or perverted, they will trickle downwards and permeate the whole soil of human society, till the "desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." When we think of what earth might become were the tiger passions within our race to be bred out at last, and the divine faculty of love and sympathy to attain its obviously intended development, it would seem as if efforts for the improvement of our physical or sanitary conditions, or for the advance of arts, science or laws, were scarcely worth making, in comparison of any step which should bring us nearer to such an age of joy.

But it is by no means an even and unbroken line of progress which we can flutter ourselves our race is pursuing towards a millennium of mercy. While the general stream of tendency is undoubtedly in that direction, and may indeed be dimly traced so to have been since the beginning of history, yet there are certain counter currents observable which are meeting altogether in an opposite direction. The great wars which the gigantic armies of modern European statecraft have called into being, and the dire legacy of national hatred which such events bequeath to unborn generations, present undoubtedly alarming obstacles in our road. It may excite surprise, perhaps ridicule, if I point to another and apparently comparatively insignificant feature of modern life, as no less threatening in another way. If, while a patient seems to be recovering from a long malady, a new and strange symptom should suddenly exhibit itself, small