The special subject which has produced this controversy is the present method of using the lower animals in biological research, which has so enormously extended of late years. The essence of the controversy is the ethical question--viz., Have we a right to torture? It must be distinctly understood that there is here no question of our right under certain circumstances to put to death. Neither is there a doubt of the utility of rational experiment and of research. But the right to put to death in the most humane manner known to us, and the right to torture to death, are two widely different questions. We have no right, for any purpose whatever, to torture a living creature to death, either by the mutilation of the organs, the slow deprivation of the necessary conditions of life, or the still slower process of destroying by the inoculation of disease. CHAPTER IV _Right and Wrong Method_ It must be carefully noted that the wrong involved in inflicting torture upon a living creature is the violation of a rational principle. The employment of torture or of painful experiment in biological research is not a question of the right to gain knowledge; it is a question of how we seek to gain knowledge. It applies directly to method. Thus, the fact observed by Paget, that in a patient who vomited all fat, the pancreas alone was found on post-mortem examination to be diseased, is worth more than a series of experiments on lower animals of different constitution from our own. In the slow approach towards truth, which is the great object of science, no single method is indispensable. The human mind is so full of activities, Nature presents such an infinite variety of resources, that progress in research can never be hindered by the choice of right instead of wrong method. This is well stated by one of our most experienced investigators when he says: ‘Methods run with the manners and customs of the ages. In science there is no one method that can be considered indispensable. Attributes are indispensable; observation, industry, accuracy, are indispensable; methods are not. They may be convenient, they may be useful, they may be expedient, but nothing more.’[10] This admirable statement throws a flood of light upon the confusion and perplexity of the present controversy. It shows the error of both the so-called unscientific and scientific parties. It shows the error (not unnatural), in the former, of confounding together experiment, research, laboratory, and scientific investigation, and classing them under one indiscriminate ban of cruelty; it also shows the narrow vision and false reasoning of those who claim that right and wrong have no meaning when applied to the investigation of phenomena supposed to be revealed by the senses, or state that the collecting of so-called facts, named knowledge, is an end in itself, to be unrestrained and justified in itself.