To judge from appearances, we are threatened with a new agitation against vivisection. The recent controversy carried on in the columns of the Times revealed an amount of heat on the subject which can hardly fail to find some new mode of motion on the platform, or even in Parliament. It is evident that passions of no common fervor have been kindled, at least, in one party to the controversy, and efforts will probably be made to work the public mind up to a similar temperature. The few observations which follow are intended to have, if possible, a contrary effect. The question of vivisection should not be beyond the possibility of a rational discussion. When antagonism, so fierce and uncompromising, exists as in the present case, the presumption is that the disputants argue from incompatible principles. Neither side convinces or even seriously discomposes the other, because they are not agreed as to the ultimate criteria of the debate.

It is evident that the first and most important point to be decided, is: “What is the just and moral attitude of man towards the lower animals?” or to put the question in another form: “What are the rights of animals as against man?” Till these questions are answered with some approach to definiteness, we clearly shall float about in vague generalities. Formerly, animals had no rights; they have very few now in some parts of the East. Man exercised his power and cruelty upon them with little or no blame from the mass of his fellows. The improved sentiment in this respect is one of the best proofs of progress that we have to show. Cruelty to animals is not only punished by law, but reprobated, we may believe—in spite of occasional brutalities—by general public opinion. The point on which precision is required is, how far this reformed sentiment is to extend? Does it allow us to use animals (even to the extent of eating them) for our own purposes, on the condition of treating them well on the whole, of not inflicting upon them unnecessary pain; or should it logically lead to complete abstention from meddling with them at all, from interfering with their liberty, from making them work for us, and supplying by their bodies a chief article of our food? Only the extreme sect of vegetarians maintains this latter view, and with vegetarians we are not for the moment concerned; and I am not aware that even vegetarians oppose the labor of animals for the uses of man. Now, what I would wish to point out is, that if we do allow the use of animals by man, it is a practical impossibility to prevent the occasional, or even the frequent infliction of great pain and suffering upon them, at times amounting to cruelty; that if the infliction of cruelty is a valid argument against the practice of vivisection, it is a valid argument against a number of other practices, which nevertheless go unchallenged. The general public has a right to ask the opponents of vivisection why they are so peremptory in denouncing one, and relatively a small form of cruelty, while they are silent and passive in reference to other and much more common forms. We want to know the reason of what appears a very great and palpable inconsistency. We could understand people who said, “You have no more right to enslave, kill, and eat animals than men; À fortiori, you may not vivisect them.” But it is not easy to see how those who do not object, apparently, to the numberless cruel usages to which the domesticated animals are inevitably subjected by our enslavement of them, yet pass these all by and fix their eyes exclusively on one minute form of cruelty, singling that out for exclusive obloquy and reprobation. Miss Cobbe (Times, Jan. 6) says, “The whole practice (of vivisection) starts from a wrong view of the use of the lower animals, and of their relations to us.” That may be very true, but I question if Miss Cobbe had sufficiently considered the number of “practices” which her principles should lead her to pronounce as equally starting from a wrong view of the use of the lower animals, and of their relation to us.

It is clear that the anti-vivisectionists are resolute in refusing the challenge repeatedly made to them, either to denounce the cruelties of sport or to hold their peace about the cruelties of vivisection. One sees the shrewdness but hardly the consistency or the courage of their policy in this respect. Sport is a time-honored institution, the amusement of the “fine old English gentleman,” most respectable, conservative, and connected with the landed interest; hostility to it shows that you are a low radical fellow, quite remote from the feeling of good society. Sport is therefore let alone. The lingering agony and death of the wounded birds, the anguish of the coursed hare, the misery of the hunted fox, even when not aggravated by the veritable auto da fÉ of smoking or burning him out if he has taken to earth, the abominable cruelty of rabbit traps; these forms of cruelty and “torture,” inasmuch as their sole object is the amusement of our idle classes, do not move the indignant compassion of the anti-vivisectionist. The sportsman may steal a horse when the biologist may not look over a hedge. The constant cruelty to horses by ill-fitting harness, over-loading, and over-driving must distress every human mind. A tight collar which presses on the windpipe and makes breathing a repeated pain must in its daily and hourly accumulation produce an amount of suffering which few vivisectionists could equal if they tried. Look at the forelegs of cab horses, especially of the four-wheelers on night service, and mark their knees “over,” as it is called, which means seriously diseased joint, probably never moved without pain. The efforts of horses to keep their feet in “greasy” weather on the wood pavement are horrible to witness. To such a nervous animal as the horse the fear of falling is a very painful emotion; yet hundreds of omnibuses tear along at express speed every morning and evening, with loads which only the pluck of the animals enables them to draw, and not a step of the journey between the City and the West End is probably made without the presence of this painful emotion. Every day, in some part of the route, a horse falls. Then occurs one of the most repulsive incidents of the London streets, the gaping crowd of idlers, through which is heard the unfailing prescription to “sit on his head,” promptly carried out by some officious rough, who has no scruples as to the “relations of the lower animals to us.” Again, in war the sufferings and consumption of animals is simply frightful. Field-officers—some of whom, it appears, are opposed to vivisection—are generally rather proud, or they used to be, of having horses “shot under them.” But this cannot occur without considerable torture to the horses. The number of camels which slipped and “split up” in the Afghan war has been variously stated between ten and fifteen thousand. In either case animal suffering must have been on a colossal scale. Now the point one would like to see cleared up is, why this almost boundless field of animal suffering is ignored and the relatively minute amount of it produced in the dissecting-rooms of biologists so loudly denounced.

But what I wish particularly to call attention to is the practice of vivisection as exercised by our graziers and breeders all over the country on tens of thousands of animals yearly, by an operation always involving great pain and occasional death. In a review intended for general circulation the operation I refer to cannot be described in detail, but every one will understand the allusion made. It is performed on horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and fowls. With regard to the horses the object is to make them docile and manageable. The eminent Veterinary-Surgeon Youatt, in his book on the Horse (chap. xv.), speaks of it as often performed “with haste, carelessness, and brutality:” but even he is of opinion “that the old method of preventing hÆmorrhage by temporary pressure of the vessels while they are seared with a hot iron must not perhaps be abandoned.” He objects strongly to a “practice of some farmers,” who, by means of a ligature obtain their end, but “not until the animal has suffered sadly,” and adds that inflammation and death frequently ensue.

With regard to cattle, sheep, and pigs, the object of the operation is to hasten growth, to increase size, and to improve the flavor of the meat. The mutton, beef, and pork on which we feed are, with rare exceptions, the flesh of animals who have been submitted to the painful operation in question. In the case of the female pig the corresponding operation is particularly severe; while as to fowls, the pain inflicted was so excruciating in the opinion of an illustrious young physiologist, whom science still mourns, that he on principle abstained from eating the flesh of the capon.

Now there is no doubt that here we have vivisection in its most extensive and harsh form. More animals are subjected to it in one year than have been vivisected by biologists in half-a-century. It need not be said that anÆsthetics are not used, and if they were or could be they would not assuage the suffering which follows the operation. It will surely be only prudent for the opponents of scientific vivisection to inform us why they are passive and silent with regard to bucolic vivisection. They declare that knowledge obtained by the torture of animals is impure, unholy, and vitiated at its source, and they reject it with many expressions of scorn. What do they say to their daily food which is obtained by the same means? They live by the results of vivisection on the largest scale—the food they eat—and they spend a good portion of their lives thus sustained in denouncing vivisection on the smallest scale because it only produces knowledge. It is true that they are not particular to conceal their suspicion that the knowledge claimed to be derived from vivisection is an imposture and a sham. Do they not, by the inconsistencies here briefly alluded to, their hostility to alleged knowledge, and their devotion to very substantial beef and mutton, the one and the other the products of vivisection, expose themselves to a suspicion better founded than that which they allow themselves to express? They question the value of vivisection, may not the single-mindedness of their hostility to it be questioned with better ground? Biology is now the frontier science exposed for obvious reasons to the odium theologicum in a marked degree. The havoc it has made among cherished religious opinions amply accounts for the dislike which it excites. But it is difficult to attack. On the other hand, an outcry that its methods are cruel, immoral, and revolting may serve as a useful diversion, and even give it a welcome check. The Puritans, it was remarked, objected to bear-baiting, not because it hurt the bear, but because it pleased the men. May we not say that vivisection is opposed, not because it is painful to animals, but because it tends to the advancement of science?

The question recurs, What is our proper relation to the lower animals? May we use them? If so, abuse and cruelty will inevitably occur. May we not use them? Then our civilisation and daily life must be revolutionised to a degree not suggested or easy to conceive.—Fortnightly Review.