EXPERIMENTAL TORTURE.
Great is the change when we turn from the easy, thoughtless
indifferentism of the sportsman or the milliner to the more determined
and deliberately chosen attitude of the scientist--so great, indeed,
that by many people, even among professed champions of animals’
rights, it is held impossible to trace such dissimilar lines of
action to one and the same source. Yet it can be shown, I think, that
in this instance, as in those already examined, the prime cause of
man’s injustice to the lower animals is the belief that they are mere
automata, devoid alike of spirit, character, and individuality; only,
while the ignorant sportsman expresses this contempt through the medium
of the battue, and the milliner through that of the bonnet, the more
seriously-minded physiologist works his work in the “experimental
torture” of the laboratory. The difference lies in the temperament of
the men, and in the tone of their profession; but in their denial of
the most elementary rights of the lower races, they are all inspired
and instigated by one common prejudice.
The analytical method employed by modern science tends ultimately, in
the hands of its most enlightened exponents, to a recognition of the
close relationship between mankind and the animals; but incidentally
it has exercised a most sinister effect on the study of the _jus
animalium_ among the mass of average men. For consider the dealings
of the so-called naturalist with the animals whose nature he makes it
his business to observe! In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, he is
wholly unappreciative of the distinctive quality, the individuality,
of the subject of his investigations, and becomes nothing more than a
contented accumulator of facts, an industrious dissector of carcasses.
“I think the most important requisite in describing an animal,” says
Thoreau, “is to be sure that you give its character and spirit, for
in that you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its parts
known and unknown. Surely the most important part of an animal is its
_anima_, its vital spirit, on which is based its character and all
the particulars by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific
books which treat of animals leave this out altogether, and what they
describe are, as it were, phenomena of dead matter.”
The whole system of our “natural history” as practised at the present
time, is based on a deplorably partial and misleading method. Does
a rare bird alight on our shores? It is at once slaughtered by some
enterprising collector, and proudly handed over to the nearest
taxidermist, that it may be “preserved,” among a number of other
stuffed corpses, in the local Museum. It is a dismal business at best,
this science of the fowling-piece and the dissecting-knife, but it
is in keeping with the utilitarian tendency of a certain school of
thought, and only a few of its professors rise out of it, and above
it, to a maturer and more far-sighted understanding.
“The child,” says Michelet, “disports himself, shatters, and
destroys; he finds his happiness in _undoing_. And science, in its
childhood, does the same. It cannot study unless it kills. The sole
use which it makes of a living mind is, in the first place, to
dissect it. None carry into scientific pursuits that tender reverence
for life which Nature rewards by unveiling to us her mysteries.”
Under these circumstances, it is scarcely to be wondered at that
modern scientists, their minds athirst for further and further
opportunities of satisfying this analytical curiosity, should desire
to have recourse to the experimental torture which is euphemistically
described as “vivisection.” They are caught and impelled by the
overmastering passion of knowledge; and, as a handy subject for the
gratification of this passion, they see before them the helpless race
of animals, in part wild, in part domesticated, but alike regarded by
the generality of mankind as incapable of possessing any “rights.” They
are practically accustomed (despite their ostensible disavowal of the
Cartesian theory) to treat these animals as automata--things made to be
killed and dissected and catalogued for the advancement of knowledge;
they are, moreover, in their professional capacity, the lineal
descendants of a class of men who, however kindly and considerate
in other respects, have never scrupled to subordinate the strongest
promptings of humaneness to the least of the supposed interests of
science.[38] Given these conditions, it seems as inevitable that the
physiologist should vivisect as that the country gentleman should
shoot. Experimental torture is as appropriately the study of the
half-enlightened man as sport is the amusement of the half-witted.
But the fact that vivisection is not, as some of its opponents would
appear to regard it, a portentous, unaccountable phenomenon, but rather
the logical outcome of a certain ill-balanced habit of mind, does not
in any way detract from its intellectual and moral loathsomeness.
It is idle to spend a single moment in advocating the rights of the
lower animals, if such rights do not include a total and unqualified
exemption from the awful tortures of vivisection--from the doom of
being slowly and mercilessly dismembered, or flayed, or baked alive, or
infected with some deadly virus, or subjected to any of the numerous
modes of torture inflicted by the Scientific Inquisition.[39] Let us
heartily endorse the words of Miss Cobbe on this crucial subject:
“The _minimum_ of all possible rights plainly is--to be spared the
worst of all possible wrongs; and if a horse or dog have no claim
to be spared from being maddened and mangled after the fashion of
Pasteur and Chauveau, then it is impossible it can have any right at
all, or that any offence against it, by gentle or simple, can deserve
punishment.”
The assertion, commonly made by the apologists of the Scientific
Inquisition, that vivisection is justified by its utility--that it is,
in fact, indispensable to the advance of knowledge and civilization--is
founded on a mere half-view of the position; the scientist, as I have
already remarked, is a half-enlightened man. Let us assume (a large
assumption, certainly, controverted as it is by some most weighty
medical testimony) that the progress of surgical science is assisted
by the experiments of the vivisector. What then? Before rushing to the
conclusion that vivisection is justifiable on that account, a wise man
will take into full consideration the other, the moral side of the
question--the hideous injustice of torturing a sentient animal, and the
terrible wrong thereby done to the humane sense of the community.[40]
The wise scientist and the wise humanist are identical. A true science
cannot possibly ignore the incontrovertible fact that the practice
of vivisection is revolting to the human conscience, even among the
ordinary members of a not over-sensitive society. The so-called
“science” which overlooks this vital fact, and confines its view to
the material aspects of the problem, is not science at all, but a
one-sided assertion of the views which find favour with a particular
class of specialists.
Nothing is necessary which is abhorrent, revolting, intolerable,
to the general instincts of humanity. Better a thousand times that
science should forego or postpone the questionable advantage of certain
problematical discoveries, than that the moral conscience of the
community should be unmistakably outraged by the confusion of right and
wrong. The short cut is not always the right path; and to perpetrate
a cruel injustice to the lower animals, and then attempt to excuse it
on the ground that it will benefit posterity, is an argument which is
as irrelevant as it is immoral. Ingenious it may be (in the way of
hoodwinking the unwary) but it is certainly in no true sense scientific.
If there be one bright spot, one refreshing oasis, in the discussion
of this dreary subject, it is the humorous recurrence of the old
threadbare fallacy of “better for the animals themselves.” Yes, even
here, in the laboratory of the vivisector, amidst the baking and sawing
and dissection, we are sometimes met by that familiar friend--the proud
plea of a single-hearted regard for the interests of the suffering
animals! Who knows but what some beneficent experimentalist, if only
he be permitted to cut up a sufficient number of victims, may discover
some potent remedy for all the lamented ills of the animal as well as
of the human creation? Can we doubt that the victims themselves, if
once they could realize the noble object of their martyrdom, would vie
with each other in rushing eagerly on the knife? The only marvel is
that, where the cause is so meritorious, no _human_ volunteer has as
yet come forward to die under the hands of the vivisector![41]
It is fully admitted that experiments on men would be far more valuable
and conclusive than experiments on animals; yet scientists usually
disavow any wish to revive these practices, and indignantly deny the
rumours, occasionally circulated, that the poorer patients in hospitals
are the subjects of such anatomical curiosity. Now here, it will be
observed, in the case of men, the _moral_ aspect of vivisection is
admitted by the scientist as a matter of course, yet in the case
of animals it is allowed no weight whatever! How can this strange
inconsistency be justified, unless on the assumption that men have
rights, but animals have no rights--in other words, that animals are
mere _things_, possessed of no claim on the justice and forbearance of
the community?
One of the most notable and ominous features in the apologies offered
for vivisection is the assertion, so commonly made by scientific
writers, that it is “no worse” than certain kindred practices. When
the upholders of any accused institution begin to plead that it is
“no worse” than other institutions, we may feel quite assured that
the case is a very bad one indeed--it is the drowning man catching
at the last straw and shred of argument. Thus the advocates of
experimental torture are reduced to the expedient of laying stress on
the cruelties of the butcher and the herdsman, and inquiring why, if
pole-axing and castration are permissible, vivisection may not also be
permitted.[42] Sport, also, is a practice which has greatly shocked the
susceptibilities of the humane vivisector. A writer in the “Fortnightly
Review” has defined sport as “the love of the clever destruction of
living things,” and has calculated that three millions of animals
are yearly mangled by English sportsmen, in addition to those killed
outright.[43]
Now if the attack on vivisection emanated primarily or wholly from
the apologists of the sportsman and slaughterer, this _tu quoque_
of the scientist’s must be allowed to be a smart, though rather
flippant, retort; but when _all_ cruelty is arraigned as inhuman
and unjustifiable, an evasive answer of this kind ceases to have
any pertinence. Let us admit, however, that, in contrast with the
childish brutality of the sportsman, the undoubted seriousness and
conscientiousness of the vivisector (for I do not question that he acts
from conscientious motives) may be counted to his advantage. But then
we have to remember, on the other hand, that the conscientious man,
when he goes wrong, is far more dangerous to society than the knave or
the fool; indeed, the special horror of vivisection consists precisely
in this fact, that it is not due to mere thoughtlessness and ignorance,
but represents a deliberate, avowed, conscientious invasion of the
very principle of animals’ rights.
I have already said that it is idle to speculate which is the worst
form of cruelty to animals, for certainly in this subject, if anywhere,
we must
“... reject the lore
Of nicely calculated less or more.”
Vivisection, if there be any truth at all in the principle for which
I am contending, is not the root, but the flower and consummation of
barbarity and injustice--the _ne plus ultra_ of iniquity in man’s
dealings with the lower races. The root of the evil lies, as I have
throughout asserted, in that detestable assumption (detestable equally
whether it be based on pseudo-religious or pseudo-scientific grounds)
that there is a gulf, an impassable barrier, between man and the
animals, and that the moral instincts of compassion, justice, and love,
are to be as sedulously repressed and thwarted in the one direction as
they are to be fostered and extended in the other.
For this very reason our crusade against the Scientific Inquisition, to
be thorough and successful, must be founded on the rock of consistent
opposition to cruelty in every form and phase; it is useless to
denounce vivisection as the source of all inhumanities, and, while
demanding its immediate suppression, to suppose that other minor
questions may be indefinitely postponed. It is true that the actual
emancipation of the lower races, as of the human, can only proceed
step by step, and that it is both natural and politic to strike first
at what is most repulsive to the public conscience. I am not denying
the wisdom of such a concentration of effort on any particular point,
but warning my readers against the too common tendency to forget the
general principle that underlies each individual protest.
The spirit in which we approach these matters should be a liberal
and far-seeing one. Those who work for the abolition of vivisection,
or any other particular wrong, should do so with the avowed purpose
of capturing one stronghold of the enemy, not because they believe
that the war will then be over, but because they will be able to use
the position thus gained as an advantageous starting-point for still
further progression.