MISS COBBE'S "MODERN RACK."*

UNDER the above title, Miss Cobbe has collected the various papers written by her in her fifteen years' crusade against vivisection, and the little volume contains an eloquent and forcible summary of her pleading for the dumb creatures she has tried to save from suffering ; while her vigour of style, and the background of cultivation which is implied in all she writes, prevent the subject from being as painful reading as might be supposed. She has been accused of inaccuracy and injustice ; and if she has entirely escaped these temptations, she is probably the first reformer who has done so. Whether we form our judgment from the recollections of private or public life, we have to allow that people not otherwise untrust- worthy, do form, or at all events express, irreconcilable opinions not only as to what ought to happen or what will happen, but as to what has happened, when 'it concerns a matter of keen controversy. A short review does not appear to us a good opportunity for going into questions of misstatement, and we will merely allude to two facts brought forward in this volume which seem to us to need explanation,—the first, that Drs. Ferrier and Yeo, according to the Philosophical Trans- actions of the Royal Society for 1884, made certain experiments conjointly for which the former, in a prosecution brought against him for performing these experiments without a licence, denied all responsibility on oath ; the second, that Sir William Harcourt, speaking in the House of Commons on April 4th, 1883, denied that experiments on living animals in illustra- tion of lectures were legal, when he had, according to Miss Cobbe (p. 89), " given permission to sixteen persons to use such demonstrations." But such explanation seems to us important only because it affects the character of in- dividuals. Whether the Professor and the Minister were acting on the view held by no less an authority than Milton, that it was morally defensible to use deceit with persons disordered in mind, a category which may be supposed to include the opponents of scientific men, or whether some explanation may bring their statements into harmony with their actions, the cause which they oppose and the cause which they defend remain either way much the same. We are sincerely anxious to do justice to the cause which they defend, and we will endeavour to state their arguments, fairly in- dicating very slightly those by which we are led to oppose views endorsed by names of so much weight, and supported by con- siderations so obvious, and to many so convincing.

It is a very strong argument on the side of the vivisec- tionists that vivisection is held by almost all scientific men to be a necessary instrument of science, and by most doctors to be a potent adjunct to the art of healing. We have heard this view questioned by scientific lips ; while a protest from one who certainly will not be accused of any disrespect for science —Auguste Comte—reinforces the doubt of the non-scientific

• The Modern Rack Papers on Vivisection,. By Frances Power Cobbs. London: Swan Sonnenachein. 1889. mind whether an examination of the living organism made under conditions so unnatural may not be misleading rather than instructive ; but still, speaking broadly, that opinion is the one held by scientific persons concerning the subject- matter which they best understand. The verdict of Science in our day is given as freely for the use of the modern rack, as the verdict of Religion in a former day for the use of the ancient rack. And the generality of people no more think of questioning the verdict of Science in the nineteenth century, than in the thirteenth they would have thought of questioning the verdict of Religion. Then, as now, what seemed at stake was the salvation of mankind, and a race saved from disease is as potent a conception as a soul saved from hell. We are more inclined to dispute the principles than the facts of the scientific party. After carefully watching every scrap of evidence bearing on this point in the last dozen years, it does, indeed, appear to us that any supposed case of direct medical advantage from vivisection—as, for instance, the operation originated by Dr. Clay, and claimed by the Bishop of Peterborough in the House of Lords as the great triumph of vivisection (see British Medical Journal, July 17th, 1880)—has broken down. But we must not assume that this will always be the case. We may suspect that vivisection no more furthers the benefit of humanity than the Inquisition did ; but we must remember that our opponents believe in the value of the first no less firmly than did Philip II. of Spain in the value of the last, and we are hardly prepared to say that, from their own point of view, they are equally mistaken. The thing they think supreme may be furthered by vivisection. We have to ask if it ought to be gained at such a price, what- ever be its own value.

The argument most often brought forward on the scientific side (to judge from our own experience)—that which is fur- nished by the existence of field sports—is well summed up by Miss Cobbe (p. 10) ; but it is difficult for a woman, perhaps, to do justice to this point of view. We will try to express on this subject what we suppose to be the most rational version of the case of her opponents. It must be allowed,' one of them may be supposed to urge, that it would be quite impossible to put a stop to hunting, and that hunting, if you look at it in cold blood, must be called cruel. Well, what is the good of hunting P It gives a good many worthy gentlemen and their dependants a point of common interest ; it is a health- ful employment, it develops some fine, manly qualities, and altogether turns out the sort of man one likes to think of as the average Englishman. Now, we have aims much more important than these. We are going to give a point of common interest, not to a few landowners and farmers, who will be forgotten as soon as they are dead—the feral consumere nati, as Fielding called them—but to the mental legislators of our race. You trust sportsmen ; you will not hear of any shackles on their cruelty ; they may set what traps they please for the creatures they call vermin, and leave them to die in agonies that exceed all that has ordinarily to be endured at the hands of the physiologist : but you surround men of intellect and fame with annoying precautions ; while you leave Squire Western omnipotent over the creatures he looks on as a cat does a mouse, you hamper with restrictions the Newtons and Galileos of a science no less noble than

astronomy. And remember' (our vivisectionist might urge with some force), that when you allow that it would be im-

possible to legislate against field sports, you are really sum- ming up a wide and various cluster of arguments on our side. We are not merely saying, when we point out that Englishmen

encourage sport, " Others are as bad as we are." We are gathering up considerations that do unquestionably satisfy the consciences of good men on the whole, though perhaps they could not put them into logical shape.'

In endeavouring to put the case of our adversaries at its strongest, we have made a special effort to put ourselves in their place with regard to sport, because this is the point which we have always found brought forward as irresistible by those whose support to vivisection was given reluctantly, —by those, that is, on whom we should most wish to make some impression. When the Vivisection Act was passed, there was a kind of feeling, which is perhaps lessened since then, that legislators, in passing over the sins of landlords for the sins of scientific investigators, were compounding for sins they were inclined to by damning those they had no mind to. This feeling has always been an obstacle in the way of any protection of animals. Sydney Smith satirised, in the Edinburgh Review, the attempt to do away with what may be called the field sports of the poor, and there is no doubt that the cruelty we legislate against is the cruelty of the poor rather than of the rich. Those who blame this as an unworthy truckling to vice in the upper classes, confound the standard which should be the aim of the moralist with that view of possibilities which must be the guide of the legislator. But they have something plausible to say for themselves, and make an impression on many minds.

We cannot say as much for another argument somewhat similar to this one, the plea that " anti-vivisectionists " are committed to a propaganda against animal food as much as against sport. As if we did not, just as much with men as with beasts, draw a clear line of distinction between hastening that event which comes to every creature, and making existence hateful ; as if on the field of battle we should spare the life of the best of men, or in the camp afterwards wring information by torture from the worst ! But this is hardly worth saying. We have to notice the strongest points of our opponents, and we will not weaken their case by an appendiv of what is manifestly foolish.

To our own mind, it is not so much that the arguments here set forth are refuted by stronger arguments against them, as that they become arguments against the practice they are intended to support, as soon as ever one realises what that practice is. For they show us bow much temptation there is to justify things that nothing can justify. All this might be urged against experiments on animals with unanswerable force if all experiments were what many are. The whole question is one of proportion. A student of biology—Mr. Romanes—has declared in these columns, and we doubt not with perfect sin- cerity, that he had often endured at the hands of his dentist much more than he believed himself ever to have seen inflicted in an experiment upon animals If that statement could be quite truthfully repeated by every one who had ever been the witness to a vivisection, we should concede that among the many and great evils of the world this was not one worth opposing. But it is not from sensational accounts of anti-vivisectionists that we learn how unlike this is to the truth. We do not ask our readers to let themselves be influenced by one line written by Miss Cobbe. We would direct them to Dr. Burdon-Sanderson's Handbook to the Physiological Laboratory, a book, he says, " intended for beginners in physiological work," and which must have been consulted by many hundreds of medical students, and contri- buted largely to form their view of what it is legitimate to do.

If ordinary readers would bring home to their imaginations, on the unimpeachable testimony of men employed in vivi- section, what it is that vivisection means, the only persons who would continue to uphold the practice would be those who think that an animal cannot be wronged. Perhaps they might form a class sufficient to support it, even now, though

they are fewer than they were. The daughter of Coleridge—

one of the most gentle and amiable of women—says exactly this in her charming letters ; and a writer quoted by Miss Cobbe (p. 67), declares that " vivisection pain, even prolonged and acute pain, inflicted on any brute for the sake of a brother- man, for whom Christ died, I should be ashamed of myself indeed if I found fault with any one for inflicting." To those

who difter from this writer only in the implied reason for this belief, and the frankness with which he expresses it, there is

nothing to say. But any one who thinks wrong to an animal conceivable is bound to know what it is that scientific men make animals endure, before listening to their plea that medical science is their debtor, or that sportsmen are their superiors in cruelty.

" If I had known what I should have had to endure," said an invalid after an operation conducted under chloroform, and with every alleviation that money and love could procure, "I should have rather chosen to die." How many animals do we force to undergo, for the sake of our lives, what no one would undergo for the sake of his own ? We will not ask whether the sacrifice is wasted or effectual. The assertion that it is effectual has been often made by persons who ought to be good judges of the question, but who also had a strong interest in its decision ; while some of these assertions, it appears to us, have been dis- proved. If some prove well grounded, we shall feel to them exactly as we do towards those cases in which Mr. Fronde told Miss Cobbe—(and it is a curious chance that we once heard almost the same remark made by Dr. Martineau, not in any connection with this subject)—that he believed the life of Queen Elizabeth had been saved more than once by the influence of the rack wringing revelations from conspirators. We think it would have been better that the Protestant suc- cession should have been endangered, and Catholics not tor- tured. We would rather look back on a longer stage of Protestant struggle, and an emancipation of Protestantism unstained by cruelty. And we would rather look forward to a slower development of medical science, and a healing art that had not hardened the hearts of its votaries to the most help- less creatures that can ever come in their way, and marked its progress to soothe human suffering by agonies that brave men would rather die than endure.

Our progress upwards in the development of morals is marked, like every other ascent, by our widened horizon. Good men in the ancient world were dead to pity where slaves were concerned, because a slave had no rights. Good men in the mediaeval world were dead to pity where Jews and Mahommedans were concerned, because an infidel had no rights. We have seen, in our day, the rising tide of right cover, at least in theory, the whole world of human existence. Surely our descendants will watch its expansion cover the whole world of sentient existence: It cannot be that the vast majority of sentient beings will for ever remain outside the pale of recognised duty on the part of the only race of sentient beings which has fully recognised duty. Those who have no voice to plead for themselves, must be the last to be considered ; but it will one day be as impossible for their tor. ture to be justified by the hope of our gain, as if they were Australian savages or Whitechapel criminals. No degradation in the scale of humanity, no responsibility for crime, implies an .abdication of this negative Right of Man We are certain that in future times, the descent, if it be established, from an ancestor older than humanity will not do so either.