IS TORTURE JUSTIFIED BY UTILITY?
At every point in the discussion of vivisection we are confronted by
the plea of utility. If, to some extent, we may admit the
reasonableness of the argument, yet such admission must be with
certain definite reservations. The infliction of extreme pain either
upon human beings or on animals for objects other than their own
benefit--how far is it to be justified if some useful end is thereby
achieved? The subject is worth of study.
The utility of judicial torture as a method of securing the confession
of criminals does not seem to have been questioned for hundreds of
years. The Romans often put all their slaves to torture as soon as
any crime occurred, of which some of their servants could have been
aware. That sometimes the innocent suffered beyond endurance and
falsely confessed seemed to our forefathers no reason whatever for
changing an ancient custom, so often productive of useful ends.
Mysterious crimes, which under our modern methods of investigation
escape detection, were frequently brought to light in earlier times
simply by the threat of torment and the sight of the executioner.
There can be no question that in innumerable cases the torture of
accused criminals whose guilt was almost certain, yet not absolutely
proven, served to further the ends of Justice. If modern civilization
condemns the torture of suspected lawbreakers, it is upon other
grounds than that Justice finds it useless in every case.
The public punishment of great offences against the state--punishment
accompanied with ignominy and extreme torment--seemed to our ancestors
equally justified by utility. If an old woman were convicted of
witchcraft--and nobody questioned the actuality of the offence two
hundred and fifty years ago--her punishment by burning at the stake
certainly might be expected to deter others from entering into
compacts with the Evil One. If heresy and unbelief lead not only the
sceptic himself, but all who follow his teaching, into eternal
darkness, there seemed to our forefathers no surer method of checking
the first tendencies toward intellectual revolt, and saving
innumerable souls, than by delivering the heretic to the flames, and
accompanying his execution by everything calculated to excite popular
derision and execration. The public punishment of treason, and
particularly of attempted or achieved assassination of the sovereign
or head of the State, was made as excruciating and terrible as
possible, in order THAT THE EXAMPLE MIGHT DETER.
We speak somewhat vaguely to-day of such tortures and their
atrociously horrible accompaniments. It may be worth while to see
just what they were. two or three centuries ago civilized nations
considered that IF TORMENT WAS USEFUL IT WAS JUSTIFIABLE. There are
three cases which stand out in history with especial distinctness, the
details of which are little known, and I propose to cite them simply
as evidence of the extent to which judicial torment was carried, but a
little while ago, among some of the most enlightened and progressive
nations of modern times.
If ever the assassination of a Prince deserved the severest
punishment, it was the murder in July, 1584, of William the Silent, the
leader of the Protestants of Holland in their struggle for
independence from Spanish dominion. The sentence pronounced upon the
murderer, Balthazar Gerard, a mere hired assassin, was carried out
within ten days after commission of the crime. A contemporary writer,
apparently an eyewitness of his execution, speaks of Gerard as one
"whose death was not of a sufficient sharpness for such a caitiff, and
yet too sore for any Christian." His description of the murderer'
execution is as follows:
"The order of the torment was four days. He had the first day the
strappado openly, in the market; the second day, whipped and salted,
and his right hand cut off; the third day, his breasts cut out, and
salt thrown in, and then his left hand cut off. The last day of his
torment, which was the 10th of July, he was bound to two stakes,
standing upright, in such order that he could not shrink down nor stir
any way. Thus standing, naked, there was a great fire placed some
small distance from him wherein heated pincers of iron, with which
pincers two men did pinch and pull his flesh in small pieces from his
bones throughout most parts of his body. Then was he unbound from the
stakes and laid upon the earth, and again fastened to four posts; then
they ripped him up, at which time he had life and PERFECT MEMORY."[1]
[1] Harl. Misc., vol. iii., p. 200. "Printed at Middleborough, Anno
1584." The above account is taken from a rare publication, in the
British Museum Library. Motley's account of Gerard's torment includes
elements of horror not mentioned by this writer.
Thus did Holland, a leading civilized nation, attempt to deter
assassins from assaulting her rulers.
Three centuries ago in May, 1610, Henry IV., King of France, was
struck down by the dagger of Francis Ravilliac; and France, the
leading civilized nation of Europe, determined that the punishment of
the crime should be so horrible that it might be expected for ever to
deter others from imitating his offence. Standing in a tumbril, naked
in his shirt, with the knife wherewith he had stabbed the King chained
to his right hand, Ravilliac was carried to the doors of the Church of
Notre Dame, where he was made to descend, and to do penance for his
crime.
"After this was he carried to the Greve, where was builded a very
substantial scaffold of strong timber, whereupon he was to be
tormented to death. By the executioners, he was bound to an engine of
wood and iron, made like to a St. Andrew's Cross; and then the hand,
with the knife chained to it, wherewith he slew the king, and half the
arm, was put into an artificial furnace, then flaming with fire and
brimstone...yet nothing at all would he confess, but yelled out with
such horrible cries, even as it had been a Divill or some tormented
soul in hell...and though he deserved ten times more, yet humane
nature might inforce us to pity his distress. After this with tongs
and iron pincers made extreme hot in the same furnace, the
executioners pinched and seared his breasts, his arms, and thighs and
other fleshy parts of his body, cutting out collops of flesh and
burned them before his face; afterward into the same wounds thus made,
they poured scalding oil, rosen, pitch and brimstone...yet he would
reveal nothing but that he did it of himself...because the King
tolerated two religions in his kingdom...but cried out with most
horrible roars, even like the dying man tormented in the brazen bull
of Philaris."
Finally, his body was torn to pieces by four strong horses, the
remains gathered and burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds.
"God in His justice," piously observes the narrator, "will, I hope, in
like manner reward all such as desperately attempt to lift their hands
against the Lord's Anointed."[1]
[1] Harl. Misc., vol. vi., p. 607. "The Terrible and deserved death of
Francis Ravilliac, showing the manner of his strange torments at his
execution, the 25th of May last past, for the murther of the late
French King, Henry IV."
Almost a century and a half passed before the Place de Greve, in
Paris, again witnessed the torment of a fanatic for an attack upon the
sacred person of a King. On January 5, 1757, Louis XV. was slightly
wounded by a young Frenchman, Robert Franc,ois Damiens. The injury
was not severe, and the King's recovery was soon complete. Such an
attack, however, was a capital offence, and it was determined that the
criminal should not only lose his life, but that he should be made to
undergo every possible addition of torment and agony. On the morning
of March 28, 1757, Damiens was subjected to torture, in order to
induce him to reveal the names of any accomplices. In the extremity
of his agony he appeared at one time to lose consciousness; but the
surgeon and the physician--"qui font toujours pre'sent a` la
torture"--declared him still conscious, and the torment continued,
accompanied by "terrible cries." When he had been for two hours and a
quarter in the hands of the tormentors, the physician and surgeon gave
it as their opinion that to continue might lead to an "accident," and
the doomed wretch was taken to his dungeon, in order to recuperate.
Toward three o'clock of the afternoon the same day, Damiens was
notified that everything was in readiness for his execution. Clothed
in but a single garment, he was made to mount a tumbril, and was
carried to the doors of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Descending from
the cart, holding a lighted candle in his hands, he knelt and made
"l'amende honorable," after the form prescribed., It is but a short
distance from the Church of Notre Dame to the Place de Greve. Here a
vast crowd had gathered in order to witness the extremest agony of a
dying man. Members of the French aristocracy were present; ladies of
quality paid vast sums for the occupancy of windows overlooking the
square, and played cards to pass the time until the spectacle of
torment should begin. A scaffold about 9 feet square received the
executioners and their victim. The tortures were of the same
character as those inflicted in the same place upon the assassin of
Henry IV. There was the burning of the right hand, the mutilation of
the body and limbs, the pouring of melted lead and other substances
into bleeding wounds. Terrible cries, "heard at a great distance,"
were induced; there were shrieks for pity; there were prayers to God
for strength to endure: "Mon Dieu, la force! la force! Seigneur mon
Dieu, ayez pitie de moi! Seigneur mon Dieu, donnez-moi la patience!"
Prayers for patience, for strength to suffer and endure--these his
only petitions in the supreme agony.
At last came the final act of the tragedy. Four young and vigorous
horses were attached, each to a seared and lacerated limb, and the
attempt was made to rend asunder the still living body. The horrible
spectacle lasted for more than an hour. Finally the surgeon and the
physician in attendance gave it as their opinion that complete
dismemberment could not be effected except afer a partial severance of
the limbs. The operation was performed, the horses were again
attached, and the fearful spectacle came to an end. Damiens
apparently preserved consciousness even after both legs and an arm had
been torn from his body. The remains were gathered and burnt on the
place of torment, and the noble lords and ladies who had gloated over
the scene returned to their homes. It is not at all improbable that
among those who witnessed the torments of Damiens in 1757 for an
assault upon a King's sacred person there were some who lived to see
Louis XVI. mount the scaffold in 1793.[1]
[1] See "Pie`ces Originales des Process fait a Robert Franc,ois
Damiens, Paris," 1757, vol. iii., pp. 379-409; and Perkin's "France
under Louis XV.," vol. ii., p. 87.
I have quoted at length three cases of judicial torture, occurring
among Christian nations, which were then in the front rank of modern
civilization. In Turkey and in Egypt, in India and in China, among
the savage Sioux and Iroquois of North America, the tragedies of
prolonged torment were more frequent, but not more horrible. But in
what way do such records of torture concern the abuses of vivisection?
For two reasons they are suggestive. Not infrequently it is intimated
that reports of cruelty by physiologists cannot be true: they are
merely "blood-curdling stories"; their horror makes the charge beyond
the possibility of belief. A physiologist cannot have been so cruel,
and yet have seemed so gentle, so benevolent, so mild. Here are
presented the records of torment inflicted upon human beings; torments
approved by the highest legal authorities; torments to the supervision
of which even medical science, in one case at least, lent its
representatives to assist the torturers, and if the facts were not so
well attested, they, too, would pass belief. But we know they are not
fictions; they were actualities. To push them out of recollection
into forgetfulness is to unlearn one of the chief lessons that History
can teach us--the lesson of warning. The atrocities of biological
experimentation can no more be dismissed with a shrug of incredulity
than one can sneer at the agonies of Gerard or Damiens because they,
too, suggest a heartlessness in the men of that time which our finer
civilization can hardly conceive.
But the chief lesson of this black chapter of history concerns the
great question of utility. That these atrocious torments were
inspired simply and solely by an intense passion for revenge is an
immeasurably dishonouring imputation. For the statesmen not only, but
the religious leaders of that period, believed--and justly believed--in
the usefulness of public torture; they believed that the fear of an
ignominious and horrible death amid the jeering cries of the
surrounding populace would tend to hinder others from repeating the
offence. The utility of Terror as a deterrent they knew--as France
knew it in '93, as the Spanish Inquisition knew it for nearly three
centuries, as every nation knew it in times of popular insurrection or
foreign wars. What Civilization came at last to recognize was that
UTILITY OF TORTURE, NO MATTER HOW GREAT, COULD NOT JUSTIFY ITS USE.
This principle in its application to the punishment of human beings
has been universally recognized by every civilized nation in the
world. It only remains for the future Civilization to recognize it so
far as concerns beings inferior to ourselves. The repetition by
students in a laboratory of an experiment upon the nervous system of a
dog, simply to demonstrate well-known facts, tends, perhaps, to fix
them in memory; but that degree of utility does not justify the
torture. "The time will come," said Dr. Bigelow of Harvard Medical
School, "when the world will look back to modern vivisection in the
name of Science as it now does to burning at the stake in the name of
Religion."