Transcribed from the 1918 John Lane edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Presentation slip from the edition transcribed]
GREAT TESTIMONY
AGAINST SCIENTIFIC CRUELTY
:: COLLECTED AND EDUCED BY ::
THE HONBLE. STEPHEN COLERIDGE
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII
[Picture: Thomas Carlyle. From a drawing by Samuel Laurence in the
collection of John Lane]
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
PREFACE
If the support of great and good men, famous throughout Christendom, will
avail to justify a cause, then indeed we who would utterly abolish the
torture of animals by vivisection can never be put out of countenance.
Difficult would it be indeed to bring together the authority of so many
resounding reputations against any other act of man, since slavery was
abolished.
The poets, philosophers, saints and seers of England have united to
anathematise it as an abomination, and as a deed only possible to a
craven.
It seems strange that in the face of such authentic condemnation the
horrid practice has not disappeared off the face of the civilised earth,
until it is observed that it has received the shameless support of
science, which for two generations has usurped an authority over conduct
for which it possesses no credentials. The modern prostration of mankind
before science is a vile idolatry. In the realm of ethics science is not
constructive but destructive. It exalts the Tree of Knowledge and
depresses the Tree of Life.
How is the character of man elevated or purified by all the maddening
inventions of science? How indeed! Are we made better men by being
whirled about the globe by machinery, by the increased opportunities for
limitless volubility, or by the ingenious devices for mutual destruction?
And how are we morally advantaged by the knowledge of the infinite depths
of space, the composition of the stars and the motions of the planets?
The old Persian, when his far-travelled offspring returned with these
wonders to tell, replied: "My son, thou sayest that one star spinneth
about another star; let it spin!"
And Ruskin once remarked: "Newton explained why an apple fell, but he
never thought of explaining the exactly correlative, but infinitely more
difficult question, how the apple got up there."
The dead and dreary law of gravitation made it fall, but the glorious law
of life, known only to God, drew it up out of the earth and hung it in
all its inexplicable wonder high in the air.
And I think herein is a very good parable applicable to ourselves and our
age.
Science has found out that everything in the Universe is falling towards
everything else, or trying to do so, and we are so absorbed in this
deciduous discovery that we have forgotten to look up and observe the
lovely things about us that by God's mercy have still escaped the
withering touch of scientific knowledge.
But Science has now moved beyond the comparatively innocuous accumulation
of mechanical discoveries, and advancing into the domain of morals, has
emerged in the sinister aspect of the defender of cruelty.
This may yet prove an usurpation that will lead to its ultimate
deposition and ignominy. A time is coming when mankind will have no ear
for the advocates of what all the great and good and wise have denounced
as wicked.
If Science comes before the world declaring that cruelty is necessary for
its advance, the world will one day tell Science that it can stop where
it is.
In the meanwhile that there can be no doubt in the mind of any man as to
how the greatest leaders of thought and loftiest teachers of conduct have
united in their condemnation of vivisection, I have thought it timely to
bring them together, a noble array, in this book.
CHAPTER I: THE SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY
[Picture: The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. From an engraving by W.
J. Edwards after Frederick Sandys]
The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury consecrated a long life, and dedicated a
great position to the service of the poor, the weak and the lost. His
life and work were one of the chief glories of the nineteenth century.
From early youth to venerable age his hand was outstretched to assuage
the miseries of the helpless and to deal a blow at cruelty and
selfishness wherever he discerned it.
By his efforts women were brought up out of coal mines where they dragged
trucks on all fours like brute beasts, by his protests little boys were
saved from being forced to climb up inside chimneys risking their young
lives and limbs that others might profit thereby.
He placed himself at the head of the fight against all cruelty to
children and became the first President of the Society to put it down,
which has now become great and powerful with officers in every town to
guard child life and protect the helpless little things from all manner
of nameless sufferings.
He championed the animal world and raised his voice against the
unspeakable doings of the vivisectors, and the whole anti-vivisection
movement was started and built up under his wise and benign guidance, as
first President of the Anti-Vivisection Society.
He belonged to the period when those who worked in the field of
philanthropy were almost exclusively concerned in curing, if they could,
the evils they perceived around them; but he himself was a pioneer of the
later school who aim also at preventing those evils. Those who went
before him sought to assist the poor and helpless, but while he
endeavoured to do this with all his heart, he also strove to destroy the
causes of pauperism. He perceived that physical squalor inevitably
produces spiritual squalor, and that if we are to make men think and live
cleanly we must enable them to possess decent and clean homes.
Others of his family in the past had served the State with credit in the
great public offices that satisfy men's reputable pride and honourable
ambition, but none before him had served his fellow creatures during a
long life with no other motive than to bind up their wounds and aggravate
the mercies of God.
His appearance when I had the happiness to know him intimately was noble
and memorable, and he won his way less by commanding abilities than by
weight of character. His large benignity repressed the expression of any
small or mean thought in his presence; and his arrival was sufficient
without his saying a word to elevate the tone and manner of any
discussion in which he was expected to participate. He was incapable of
asperity.
In the House of Lords there was conceded to him by universal courtesy a
special seat which he occupied independently of the change of parties, a
tribute of respect to his unique and distinguished position which as far
as I am aware has at any rate in recent years been paid to no one else.
He was a survival of the times when rank more recognised its duties and
received more homage than in the present day; for when I was young it was
still possible for the public to believe that peerages were only
conferred on men for serious and meritorious services to the country, and
that those who succeeded to them by inheritance were trained to recognise
the large obligations of their station.
He lived in a great house on the west side of Grosvenor Square, tempering
his august surroundings with a personal austerity. There he was easily
accessible to anyone who came to him for good counsel and not to waste
his own or his host's time.
Every cabman and costermonger in London knew him by sight and would take
off his cap to him if he saw him in the streets, and the poor in the East
End knew his tall figure and distinguished countenance better than did
the men in the club windows in the West.
The beautiful monument to his memory in Regent Circus records that he was
"an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is
the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London
have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all
the efforts of Mr. Bumble to remove them.