15
In the first place, I may remark that the mental constitution of a man must be somewhat exceptional who is enthusiastically anxious to relieve the sufferings of unseen, and perhaps unborn, men and women, but who cares in comparison nothing at all for those agonies which are endured immediately under his eye by creatures who, according to his philosophy, are only a step lower in the scale of being. It verges truly on the gigantic and Promethean to talk of such devotion to the interests of humanity in the abstract; and when we behold a cultivated and gifted gentleman selecting freely for his life-work the daily mangling of dogs and cats, we are quite at a loss to qualify the grandeur of his voluntary martyrdom. Perhaps it is not very astonishing that homely people, who do not feel in their breasts the vocation for such sublime devotion, should treat the boast of these motives as just a little partaking of the character of moonshine; and suppose, in a matter-of-fact way, that either the vivisector is a perfectly callous man, whose horrid work never costs him a pang,[1] or that, if he have any lingering feelings of compassion, he puts them aside in favor of sentiments rather more common in the world than such Curtius-like self-sacrifice. As very few of us would
- ↑ *I am compelled to testify that in wading through a mass of this Dead Sea literature, I have never been refreshed by a single passing expression of commiseration for the animals, whose signs of agony are recorded merely as interesting features of the experiments; or of regret that the higher scientific objects in view necessitated the prolongation of their tortures. If such feelings exist in the hearts of the operators, I must congratulate them on the signal success wherewith they eliminate the slightest trace of them from all their reports. Further, in pursuing the books dedicated to the instruction of young students, I have looked equally in vain for any hint of caution, or recommendation to parsimony, in the use of the most excruciating experiments.
