Those who experiment with operations or the use of drugs upon animals, or inoculate them with diseases, so as to be able to bring help to mankind with the results gained, must never quiet any misgivings they feel with the general reflexion that their gruesome proceedings aim at a valuable result. They must first have considered in each individual case whether there is a real necessity to force upon any animal this sacrifice for the sake of mankind, and they must take the most careful pains to ensure that the pain inflicted is made as small as possible. How much wrong is committed in scientific institutions through neglect of anæsthetics, which to save time or trouble are not administered! How much, too, through animals being subjected to torture merely to give to students a demonstration of perfectly understood phenomena. By the very fact that animals have been subjected to experiments, and have by their pain won such valuable results for suffering [pg 257] men, a new and special relation of solidarity has been established between them and us. From that springs for each one of us a compulsion to do to every animal all the good we possibly can. By helping an insect when it is in difficulties I am thereby attempting to cancel part of man’s ever new debt to the animal world. Whenever an animal is in any way forced into the service of man, every one of us must be concerned with the suffering which it has thereby to undergo. None of us must allow to take place any suffering for which he himself is not responsible, if he can hinder it in any way, at the same time quieting his conscience with the reflexion that he would be mixing himself up in something which does not concern him. No one must shut his eyes and regard as non-existent the sufferings of which he spares himself the sight. Let no one regard as light the burden of his responsibility. While so much ill-treatment of animals goes on, while the moans of thirsty animals in railway trucks sound unheard, while so much brutality prevails in our slaughter-houses, while animals have to suffer in our kitchens painful death from unskilled hands, while animals have to endure intolerable treatment from heartless men, or are left to the cruel play of children, we all share the guilt. We are afraid of making ourselves conspicuous, if we let it be noticed how we feel for the sufferings which man brings upon the animals. We think at the same time that others have become more “rational” than we are, and that they take as being usual and as a matter of course, what we are excited about. Yet suddenly they will let slip a word which shows us that they too have not yet learnt to acquiesce. And now, though they are strangers, they are quite near us. The mask in which we misled each other falls off. We know now, from one another, that we are alike in being unable to escape from the gruesome proceedings that are taking place unceasingly around us. What a happy making of a new acquaintance!