But how is this recognition of the duty and glory of the sacrifice of health and life at the call of every higher law to be reconciled with the “Doctor’s Doctrine” that the interests of health are so supreme that they themselves constitute the highest law, and render any practice conducive to them _ipso facto_ lawful? Either we must admit, according to the Divine’s Doctrine, that moral interests transcend bodily interests, or we must hold, according to Doctor’s Doctrine, that bodily interests transcend moral interests. There is no third alternative. One principle or the other must prevail, and sooner or later leaven society with its ennobling or else its debasing influence. There are signs apparent that the Doctor’s Doctrine is already bearing its proper fruit, and that, soothed by a becalmed conscience, absolved by the authority of the priesthood of Science, men and women are beginning to be systematically selfish and self-indulgent where their health is concerned, or where there may appear a chance of curing their maladies in modes not hitherto witnessed. I can only indicate a few of the ways in which this deliberate self-preservation is exhibited. Notably, it seems that the old courage of Englishmen is dwindling away. Almost every month, cases come to light wherein men, even soldiers, fail to stand by their comrades in danger; or wherein a crowd of fifty people witness a child drowning in a shallow pond without an effort to save it; or men who witness a cruel murder rush from the spot, leaving the yet breathing victim dying unaided on the ground. There is even, among young men, a cynical avowal of prudent concern for their own lives and limbs which constantly strikes the old, who remember the joyous youthful fearlessness of their fathers, as something altogether new and far indeed from pleasant to contemplate. Nor are our personal acts of selfishness and cowardice on a small scale the only logical consequences of the new principle which are already visible. Cruelty of the most heinous and systematic kind is another result. The unanimous resolution passed by the great Medical Congress in the year of grace 1881 has proclaimed that vivisection leads to discoveries conducive to the cure of disease, and _therefore_ should be sanctioned and left unrestricted by law. That is to say, that all the fiendish imaginations of men like Mantegazza and Schiff, and Goltz and Bernard, and Paul Bert, should be freely permitted in England for the sake of a chance of useful hints for therapeutic science. Thus, the whole medical profession in England stands committed to the demand that the vice of cruelty in young men and old should be deliberately unchained, expressly for the sake of anticipated benefits to bodily health.