After all, we have not only bodies but spirits, and when our minds have once become alive to ethical doubt on a question such as this (there are 870,000 signatures to a petition for the total exemption of dogs from vivisection), when we are no longer sure that we have the right so to treat our dog comrades, there has fallen a shadow on the human conscience that will surely grow, until, by adjustment of our actions to our ethical sense, it has been remedied. VI HORSES IN MINES (1) (A Letter to _The Times_, 1910.) The experience which has just befallen the 300 horses and ponies imprisoned underground during the strike riots at Clydach Vale spurs me to an appeal to all owners of collieries and mines to abandon, _as far as possible_ the use of horses and ponies below ground. The question of the treatment of pit ponies has of late attracted much attention, and is under examination by the Royal Commission on Mines. Into discussion of the truth of particular stories of cruelty I do not intend to enter. I have no first-hand knowledge, and, short of becoming a pit-pony driver, or mine inspector, no real chance of obtaining any. I wish simply to draw the attention of owners and managers of collieries and mines to certain considerations that need not in the least hurt a just belief in their own humanity or that of their employees. Apart from the aberrations of human brutes, who flourish as well above ground as below, cruelty in these days is not deliberate, but requires for its existence three primary fostering conditions: the first, an overdriven or irritated state of nerves; the second, secrecy; the third, a helpless object. The first of these conditions is always more or less present in mine work, not only because of the atmosphere and unnatural environment, but also because a certain amount of work has to be got through under difficulties in a certain amount of time. The second of these conditions is always present to a greater extent than almost anywhere above ground. The third of these conditions is obviously present. In mines and collieries, therefore, we have human nature, neither better nor worse underground than it is above, working continually under circumstances in which the three primary fostering conditions of cruelty are present. We, thus have a _primâ facie_ case for supposing—all other things being equal—that there must be more cruelty in the treatment of animals underground than on the surface. If there were not, it would mean that miners were not only as humane as the rest of mankind, which is freely admitted, but much more humane, which is not likely. The existence of these three primary fostering conditions in perpetual combination, in fact, renders the conclusion, apart from all actual evidence, as inevitable as a chemical equation.