But quickening,—a period usually occurring from the one hundred and fifteenth to the one hundred and thirtieth day after conception, but varying within still more appreciable limits in different women, and in the same women in different pregnancies, from variations in the amount of liquor amnii, the early strength of the fœtus, and other causes, and also, if at all, owing in its first sensation to rising of the womb from the pelvis, probably occurring a little earlier with boys than with girls, from their relative difference in size,[3]—is often absent, even throughout pregnancy; and fœtal movements are sometimes appreciable to the attendant when not to the mother, or indeed to the mother alone. Further, in premature births, where quickening has not occurred, or before its usual period, by the movements of the fœtus, its earlier independent and vital existence is sometimes reduced to a matter of ocular demonstration; while to the ear, in very many instances, as early and as conclusive evidence is afforded by the sounds these movements give rise to.[4] Quickening is therefore as unlikely a period for the commencement of fœtal life as those others set by Hippocrates and his successors, varying from the third day after conception, to that of the Stoics, namely birth, and as false as them all. We need not, with Dubois[5] and some earlier writers,[6] from the manifest relation of means to the end, consider that the movements of the fœtus in utero, and its consequent attitude and position, are signs of an already developed and decided sentience and will, nor is it requisite to suppose them the effect of an almost rational instinct. But that they are wholly independent of the will and the consciousness of the mother, and yet by no means characteristic of organic life, whether hers or its own,—which latter is also by abundant evidence proved independently to exist,—but decidedly animal in their character; that they are not explainable by gravity, despite all the arguments alleged, latest by Matthews Duncan,[7] nor on any other supposition save that of a special and independent excito-motory system, distinct from that of the mother,[8] brings us directly down to this—the existence of as distinct and independent a nervous centre, self-existing, self-acting, living. We set aside all the speculations of metaphysicians regarding moral accountability of the fœtus, the “potential man,” and its “inanimate vitalities,” as useless as they are bewildering. If there be life, then also the existence, however undeveloped, of an intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature, the inalienable attribute of humanity, is implied. If we have proved the existence of fœtal life before quickening has taken place or can take place, and by all analogy and a close and conclusive process of induction, its commencement at the very beginning, at conception itself, we are compelled to believe unjustifiable abortion always a crime.