Sir James Fletcher Moulton, one of the Lords Justices of the Court of Appeal, has made a statement to the Commission in defence of scientific experiment which is a masterpiece of persuasive reasoning and lucid exposition. It is somewhat remarkable that there have been and are persons in high judicial office who have shown active hostility to the cause of science and knowledge in this matter owing to their want of acquaintance with the facts and their readiness to be carried away by blind emotion. Lord Justice Moulton, on the other hand, is a scientific man by education and early training, and has come forward to state in a plain and reasonable way what is the view of the matter which commends itself to him. There is reason to hope that his view will be approved by those who read what he says calmly and without bias. His chief point is that many people are willing to admit that it is right to destroy animals (even by methods which inflict great pain on them) when an immediate result of a good and useful kind is to be obtained--as when we kill animals to serve as food or in order to prevent them from injuring us or destroying our crops and stores. Yet these same persons, he points out, by some defect of imagination are unable to see that the gaining of pain-saving or disease-preventing knowledge as the result of inflicting pain and death on a small number of animals justifies us in permitting that pain and death. They are unable to admit the justification because the knowledge and its practical application does not directly and at once follow upon the first commencement of the search for it, and they have not sufficient acquaintance with the matter to enable them to realise and confidently believe that the beneficent result will ensue. The knowledge has to be built up step by step, and the infliction of pain on the animals is separated by an appreciable lapse of time from the beneficent result--which is none the less the result which was aimed at, and the true consequence of the pain inflicted. Putting aside for the moment the fact that in these inquiries the pain is reduced to a minimum by the use of anæsthetics, it would seem that we ought to be able to recognise that the causing of a certain amount of pain to many hundreds of rabbits, and even dogs, is justified by the consequent removal of a far greater amount of pain from thousands of men and animals who are saved from suffering at a later date by the knowledge so gained.