Part 6 (1/2)
And this is the moment which has been chosen for striving to arrest the march of Science: when epidemic disease, such as the plague and cholera, is checked; tuberculosis half-conquered; diptheria rendered inoffensive; operations become almost harmless; cancer on the eve of being understood and subjugated! And are we to stop there? Are we not to seek to fathom the many problems still waiting to be solved, and on which depend the lives of so many human beings, and so much human happiness? Do you believe that Science has come to an end? Certainly we already know a great deal; but what we know is as nothing compared to what we do not know.
An immense domain of unknown truths lies open to our activity. And we are able to forsee what inexpressible benefits these new truths will scatter over suffering humanity. Consequently, everyone, every man enamoured of goodness and justice, should be filled with respect for Science, and set all his hopes on her.
At the same time, however great may be my adoration for Science, it must not be at the expense of human personalities, or, let us say it distinctly, at the expense of animal personalities, which although uncertain and indistinct, still merit a share, and a large share, of justice and of pity.
As for human personalities, without the slightest doubt, we have not the right to sacrifice an innocent creature for Science. Every human being ought to be treated with respect, and we have not the right to kill and martyrise a human being even if his death and his martyrdom might serve the cause of Science.
As for animal personalities, the question becomes much more doubtful. For inferior beings with indistinct consciousness, and, without a doubt powerless to perceive pain, no scruple should hold us back. But if it concerns beings nearer to ourselves, such as monkeys, cats, dogs, horses, all certainly capable of feeling pain, we must be chary of inflicting pain, and experiment only after having totally abolished in them all sensation of pain. But under penalty of falling into fetis.h.i.+sm, we must not fear to use the life of these beings in order to prolong the life of man. Every time we propose to make an experiment, it is as though we put this question to ourselves: is this dog worth more than a man? or than a hundred men? or than the whole of humanity to come? Thus put, the problem bears only one solution: Avoid giving pain to the animal on condition that it is not at the cost of innumerable human pains. Moreover, it is the same here as in every question we may wish to investigate: Each of the two adversaries set out from a just principle, incontestably just. But each one pushes the just principle so far that he ends by transforming it into a colossal absurdity.
In the present case, the anti-vivisectionists say: pain is an evil, even the obscure pain of the lowest animal is an evil. Now, we should do no evil; therefore we should not at any price inflict any pain whatsoever, however light it may be, on even the lowest animal. That is their syllogism. It cannot be replied to, for it is perfectly correct.
We on our side say: The suffering of man is a sacred thing. Science casts aside suffering from man. Therefore we ought to sacrifice inferior beings to the cause of Science, that is to say to the happiness of man. There again lies an irreproachable syllogism.
But these two syllogisms, if driven up to their ultimate conclusions, would lead to nonsense on the one hand and cruelty on the other. If we were to listen only to the friends of animals, we should not have the right to bleed a horse in order to save the lives of 400 children; and this contention would be both foolish and cruel.
If we were to listen only to the friends of man, we should have the right, simply as dictated by our might and fancy, to cause suffering to dogs, cats, monkeys, all innocent and sensitive animals, under pretext that these tortures are capable of alleviating human pain. That also would be folly and cruelty.
Fortunately, wisdom avoids both extremes; it fears the brutality of hard and fast syllogisms, which are absurd even by their very severity. Yes, there are the rights of man; yes, there are the rights of animals; and all our efforts should consist in holding an even balance between these two sometimes antagonistic rights. Do not let us push our reasonings to their logical but absurd extremes. Pre-occupation for the welfare of future humanity and of Science does not authorise us to be wicked and unjust towards the men of to-day, even towards one single man. So that, notwithstanding my wors.h.i.+p of Science, I would not sacrifice human lives to her. And, notwithstanding all my respect for animal pain, I would look upon the man as supremely ridiculous, even guilty, who would not innoculate a microbe into a rabbit to achieve a great discovery for humanity. Wisdom, therefore, consists precisely in this: to know where to stop in pus.h.i.+ng a reasoning to extremes. This is what physiologists have sought and are seeking to do.
In any case, and as a last conclusion, Science ought not to be sacrificed.
Now, the death-knell of science will have sounded when _savants_ are prevented from pursuing their investigations on living beings. We who, in full confidence, hope for a happier and better humanity, will never resign ourselves to closing our laboratories, to burning our books. On the contrary, we are determined, every one of us, to continue our hard labours for the great good of the men of to-day and of the generations to come.
And when we speak of Science, we do not mean only the material benefits she scatters abroad; we think also of her power as a moral force. Material and moral conquests walk hand in hand. Science is the basis of the moral law.
The universal consciousness of humanity grows greater by the acquisition of new truths. Each individual, by the very fact that he loves truth, has come to understand the moral ideal which should be ever before his eyes.
And then, in a just measure, full of pity for all suffering, but placing the suffering of man at a higher price than the suffering of the animal, we shall strive to make the respect of animal suffering accord with the search for the splendid and indispensable and divine TRUTH.
POST SCRIPTUM
In the various works, notices, discourses, etc., which have been published upon Vivisection, generally against Vivisection, I find various erroneous a.s.sertions which it is important should be pointed out. I will do so briefly.
There is, however, one a.s.sertion which appears fairly just to me. This is that in treatises on physiology, sufficient mention is not made of Vivisection, of its limits and of its abuses. At the beginning of a treatise on physiology, the author should distinctly declare there is always cruelty in vivisection conducted without chloroform or chloralose; the author should indicate that these anaesthetics ought to be administered under such or such conditions. Before initiating medical students into the study of life, it is also well to teach them to have respect for animal suffering. I would that it might be thoroughly understood that it is a matter of absolute necessity to operate upon the animal; and that when the physiologist resigns himself to this necessity he ought to perform the operation with sufficient humanity to prevent the animal from suffering. I willingly recognise that the absence of this first moral precept is a great gap in most treatises on physiology.
This, however, is about all I can concede to anti-vivisectionists; for truly they indulge in such queer, extraordinary a.s.sertions that we are completely disconcerted. Some of these fanatics pretend, for example, that physiologists should practise vivisection upon themselves. To torture a dog is as criminal as to torture a child, according to them; and animal suffering is as much to be respected as human suffering! Truly such a paradox cannot be taken seriously; if it were admitted, evidently the question is settled. But it cannot be admitted, and the whole of our argument rests upon this principle, which appears quite evident, that living beings occupy different positions in the hierarchy of nature.
Let us take a besieged city reduced to famine: will anyone pretend that the soldiers must be sacrificed before the horses, the mules, etc. Yet the case is exactly the same. It is in order to avoid the death of human beings that mice and guinea-pigs are put to death.
To deny the difference in rank of living beings is to deny evidence. A frog is a n.o.bler animal than a sea-urchin; a dog is a n.o.bler animal than a frog; for there are degrees in the intelligence, and consequently, in the capacity to suffer, and in the _quality_ of suffering among the four animal groups: the sea-urchin, the frog, the dog, and man.
Anti-vivisectionists do not admit reflex movements (which, moreover, they do not understand); and they bewail the dogs that Goltz and Ewald subjected to cerebral mutilations which took away all intellectual spontaneity and prevented them from eating spontaneously. But in those very dogs, precisely because there is no spontaneity, so there is no longer any consciousness of pain. They are, therefore, of all the beings in creation those which deserve the least commiseration; for they are protected against pain by that very ablation of the brain, the seat of pain.
We are told that it is through cowardice, through the fear of disease, that vivisection is practised. But fear of disease is not cowardice. I am neither poltroon nor coward, but I would be very sorry to be attacked by tuberculosis or cancer. I do not blush to confess that it would be very disagreeable for me to be hanged, though hanging is much less painful than tuberculosis or cancer. If it were necessary to have a hanged victim, I would much prefer that a rabbit were taken in preference to myself; and I would certainly not put my own neck in the cord to save a dog from torture.
The state of mind of anti-vivisectionists appears to me rather singular, since they are not at all afraid of disease as far as man is concerned, but they have great fear of it for animals. If pain is but an empty word, according to the celebrated phrase of Zeno, why not apply that fine maxim to the animal?
Sir James Thornton (_The Princ.i.p.al Claims on behalf of Vivisection_, London, 1907), has endeavoured to compile a list of the contradictions to be found in the treatises of physiology. He could have added considerably to the length of this chapter, for the contradictions are innumerable; which only proves, not that vivisection is useless, but that it is difficult. What would chemists say if it were maintained that chemical a.n.a.lysis was absurd because of the contradictions between chemists? They would, and rightly so, continue to make a.n.a.lyses; for they know that a.n.a.lysis is a necessary, though an imperfect, instrument. In the same manner, we shall continue to practise vivisection, though we know right well that vivisection is an imperfect, though a necessary, instrument.