To deny the difference in rank of living beings is to deny evidence. A frog is a nobler animal than a sea-urchin; a dog is a nobler animal than a frog; for there are degrees in the intelligence, and consequently, in the capacity to suffer, and in the _quality_ of suffering among the four animal groups: the sea-urchin, the frog, the dog, and man. Anti-vivisectionists do not admit reflex movements (which, moreover, they do not understand); and they bewail the dogs that Goltz and Ewald subjected to cerebral mutilations which took away all intellectual spontaneity and prevented them from eating spontaneously. But in those very dogs, precisely because there is no spontaneity, so there is no longer any consciousness of pain. They are, therefore, of all the beings in creation those which deserve the least commiseration; for they are protected against pain by that very ablation of the brain, the seat of pain. We are told that it is through cowardice, through the fear of disease, that vivisection is practised. But fear of disease is not cowardice. I am neither poltroon nor coward, but I would be very sorry to be attacked by tuberculosis or cancer. I do not blush to confess that it would be very disagreeable for me to be hanged, though hanging is much less painful than tuberculosis or cancer. If it were necessary to have a hanged victim, I would much prefer that a rabbit were taken in preference to myself; and I would certainly not put my own neck in the cord to save a dog from torture. The state of mind of anti-vivisectionists appears to me rather singular, since they are not at all afraid of disease as far as man is concerned, but they have great fear of it for animals. If pain is but an empty word, according to the celebrated phrase of Zeno, why not apply that fine maxim to the animal? Sir James Thornton (_The Principal Claims on behalf of Vivisection_, London, 1907), has endeavoured to compile a list of the contradictions to be found in the treatises of physiology. He could have added considerably to the length of this chapter, for the contradictions are innumerable; which only proves, not that vivisection is useless, but that it is difficult. What would chemists say if it were maintained that chemical analysis was absurd because of the contradictions between chemists? They would, and rightly so, continue to make analyses; for they know that analysis is a necessary, though an imperfect, instrument. In the same manner, we shall continue to practise vivisection, though we know right well that vivisection is an imperfect, though a necessary, instrument. In the course of a recent debate on vivisection, a voice was heard to call out that Lister was a brute. That "crowns" everything, and one would think that nothing more inept could be imagined.