One of the most notable and ominous features in the apologies offered for vivisection is the assertion, so commonly made by scientific writers, that it is “no worse” than certain kindred practices. When the upholders of any accused institution begin to plead that it is “no worse” than other institutions, we may feel quite assured that the case is a very bad one indeed--it is the drowning man catching at the last straw and shred of argument. Thus the advocates of experimental torture are reduced to the expedient of laying stress on the cruelties of the butcher and the herdsman, and inquiring why, if pole-axing and castration are permissible, vivisection may not also be permitted.[42] Sport, also, is a practice which has greatly shocked the susceptibilities of the humane vivisector. A writer in the “Fortnightly Review” has defined sport as “the love of the clever destruction of living things,” and has calculated that three millions of animals are yearly mangled by English sportsmen, in addition to those killed outright.[43] Now if the attack on vivisection emanated primarily or wholly from the apologists of the sportsman and slaughterer, this _tu quoque_ of the scientist’s must be allowed to be a smart, though rather flippant, retort; but when _all_ cruelty is arraigned as inhuman and unjustifiable, an evasive answer of this kind ceases to have any pertinence. Let us admit, however, that, in contrast with the childish brutality of the sportsman, the undoubted seriousness and conscientiousness of the vivisector (for I do not question that he acts from conscientious motives) may be counted to his advantage. But then we have to remember, on the other hand, that the conscientious man, when he goes wrong, is far more dangerous to society than the knave or the fool; indeed, the special horror of vivisection consists precisely in this fact, that it is not due to mere thoughtlessness and ignorance, but represents a deliberate, avowed, conscientious invasion of the very principle of animals’ rights. I have already said that it is idle to speculate which is the worst form of cruelty to animals, for certainly in this subject, if anywhere, we must “... reject the lore Of nicely calculated less or more.” Vivisection, if there be any truth at all in the principle for which I am contending, is not the root, but the flower and consummation of barbarity and injustice--the _ne plus ultra_ of iniquity in man’s dealings with the lower races. The root of the evil lies, as I have throughout asserted, in that detestable assumption (detestable equally whether it be based on pseudo-religious or pseudo-scientific grounds) that there is a gulf, an impassable barrier, between man and the animals, and that the moral instincts of compassion, justice, and love, are to be as sedulously repressed and thwarted in the one direction as they are to be fostered and extended in the other.