_But the question does not lie there._ The point is not whether the suffering of animals be a large or small quantity in nature from an absolute standpoint; the question is a higher one: we must ask ourselves if the fact of inflicting pain is compatible with human morality. Tolstoi says somewhere that the sciences are nothing, that art is nothing, that the true science is that of good and evil, of justice and injustice. Everything sinks into insignificance in presence of this great duty, or rather life has no other object. We should be entirely engrossed in doing good; justice should be our sole preoccupation. If, then, from an absolute point of view the suffering of frogs and rabbits does not count, it counts a lot from the point of view of human morality. If a bad child should martyrise a toad, it is not the toad which would interest me: poor creature of diffused consciousness, ignorant even of its own pain, such a tiny pain, too, in comparison with the immense pains which the beings of this great universe are suffering at this moment! No; the toad would scarcely exist for me. The child would interest me greatly; and all my pity would be turned upon that cruel child. My efforts would tend much less towards preventing the toad from suffering than towards preventing that human being from becoming a barbarian. If the anti-vivisectionists were true moralists and not fanatics they would say: "To provoke suffering to produce disease, to inflict tortures, is an execrable moral lesson. Whilst the first duty of man is to be good, you instruct young men to be wicked. The doctor, who ought to be compassionate for human suffering, should not serve his apprenticeship in that noble profession by showing himself devoid of pity for the suffering of innocent victims. A civilisation which allows itself to inflict death and torture on living beings can be only a barbarous civilisation." I recognise the force of that argument. And whilst not a single one of the preceding assertions of the anti-vivisectionists had succeeded in moving me, I confess that this objection of human morality is a most powerful one. I am nevertheless going to try to show that it is not admissible.