But the sight of a vivisection, the preparation of a laboratory experiment cannot be compared with the stupid and mischievous pleasures of angling and hunting. It is not a question of amusing oneself, of killing time, of diversion, of finding in the sight of blood or pain a recreation for boredom. It is quite another motive which animates the _savant_. He has ever before his mind the thought that his efforts are going to bring a little alleviation to the great sum of human suffering. If he inoculates a rabbit with tuberculosis, he cannot help thinking of all the wretched consumptives who are at that moment in the throes of death. He knows well that each time he discovers even only a particle of truth, that little bit of new truth is going to bring in its train some consequence which will bear fruit in the healing of suffering mankind. It is with no light-heartedness that the physiologist causes the blood to flow, inoculates disease, injects poisons. I know the thought which animates my friends and my colleagues when they make their experiments: it is never without the most profound pity that we dare to take a healthy, gay, confiding animal, and give him chloroform, or inject a poison into him. This respect for pain, far from decreasing with age, on the contrary goes on increasing. Just as the doctor as he grows older becomes more and more sensitive to the sight of human suffering, so the physiologist who has performed many experiments understands more and more thoroughly the seriousness of pain. He feels all the weight of it: he has a greater responsibility. His morality has become higher and higher, his sensibility has increased. Often he repeats to himself this line of Virgil's:-- "_Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco._" (Knowing misfortune, I teach the succour of the wretched.) It would, therefore, be altogether unjust to reproach the experimenter with barbarism or inhumanity; for more than any one else does he possess the sentiment of the immense misfortunes of humanity, and if he resigns himself to experimentation, it is because he sees behind his experiment an alleviation of the sufferings of both man and beast. It is related that, in one of the great battles of the last century, a general, in order to protect the retreat of his army, was obliged to send a squadron of cavalry to make a hopeless charge upon the enemy's infantry. This meant sending those brave fellows to certain death. Yet he did not hesitate; and with tears in his eyes he gave the order to charge, convinced, as every general should be, that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a few human lives for the salvation of the army, for the salvation of the country. Well, then! We consider ourselves as soldiers waging battle against the blind, malefic forces of nature. On certain days, so as to triumph over disease and ignorance, we must sacrifice a few victims. Then we do not hesitate, and it is our duty not to hesitate.