Читать книгу The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions онлайн

13 страница из 28

The Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, Head Master of Harrow, has been good enough to write to me as follows:—

I am most willing to let you quote my words, whether what I said before or what I say now. You command my full sympathy in the crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty. I say this frankly, although I know that there is some difference between us in regard to the practice of Vivisection. But even if it be necessary that in some cases, and under strict conditions, vivisectional experiments should be made upon animals, I cannot doubt that the use of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon any person who may be called to make them. I hold, therefore, that the educational effect of Vivisection is always injurious. Knowledge is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness, and I cannot believe that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young with the sight of animal suffering. For my part, I look upon the hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have met the protest raised against Vivisection as one of many signs that materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law; i.e., a preference of knowledge to goodness, of mind to spirit, or, in a word, of human things to divine. Surely it is a paradox that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the animals should be the least tender in their views of animal sufferings, and that Christians who accentuate that distinction should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing their own. I conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern educator, at School or at College, to cultivate in his pupils, by all the means in his power, the sympathetic sentiment towards the animal world.