Science has found out that everything in the Universe is falling towards everything else, or trying to do so, and we are so absorbed in this deciduous discovery that we have forgotten to look up and observe the lovely things about us that by God's mercy have still escaped the withering touch of scientific knowledge. But Science has now moved beyond the comparatively innocuous accumulation of mechanical discoveries, and advancing into the domain of morals, has emerged in the sinister aspect of the defender of cruelty. This may yet prove an usurpation that will lead to its ultimate deposition and ignominy. A time is coming when mankind will have no ear for the advocates of what all the great and good and wise have denounced as wicked. If Science comes before the world declaring that cruelty is necessary for its advance, the world will one day tell Science that it can stop where it is. In the meanwhile that there can be no doubt in the mind of any man as to how the greatest leaders of thought and loftiest teachers of conduct have united in their condemnation of vivisection, I have thought it timely to bring them together, a noble array, in this book. CHAPTER I: THE SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G. FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ANTI-VIVISECTION SOCIETY [Picture: The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. From an engraving by W. J. Edwards after Frederick Sandys] The seventh Earl of Shaftesbury consecrated a long life, and dedicated a great position to the service of the poor, the weak and the lost. His life and work were one of the chief glories of the nineteenth century. From early youth to venerable age his hand was outstretched to assuage the miseries of the helpless and to deal a blow at cruelty and selfishness wherever he discerned it. By his efforts women were brought up out of coal mines where they dragged trucks on all fours like brute beasts, by his protests little boys were saved from being forced to climb up inside chimneys risking their young lives and limbs that others might profit thereby. He placed himself at the head of the fight against all cruelty to children and became the first President of the Society to put it down, which has now become great and powerful with officers in every town to guard child life and protect the helpless little things from all manner of nameless sufferings. He championed the animal world and raised his voice against the unspeakable doings of the vivisectors, and the whole anti-vivisection movement was started and built up under his wise and benign guidance, as first President of the Anti-Vivisection Society.