The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions — John Shaqi
The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and DiscussionsCobbe, Frances Power
Religion
The Scientific Spirit of the Age, and Other Pleas and Discussions
Cobbe, Frances Power
Knowledge, Sociology of; Philosophy and religion; Science -- Moral and ethical aspects
I am most willing to let you quote my words, whether what I said
before or what I say now. You command my full sympathy in the
crusade which you have so nobly declared against cruelty. I say this
frankly, although I know that there is some difference between us in
regard to the practice of Vivisection. But even if it be necessary
that in some cases, and under strict conditions, vivisectional
experiments should be made upon animals, I cannot doubt that the use
of such experiments tends to exercise a demoralizing influence upon
any person who may be called to make them. I hold, therefore, that
the educational effect of Vivisection is always injurious. Knowledge
is dearly purchased at the cost of tenderness, and I cannot believe
that any morally-minded person could desire to familiarize the young
with the sight of animal suffering. For my part, I look upon the
hardness of heart with which some distinguished physiologists have
met the protest raised against Vivisection as one of many signs that
materialism means at the last an inversion of the ethical law;
_i.e._, a preference of knowledge to goodness, of mind to spirit,
or, in a word, of human things to divine. Surely it is a paradox
that they who minimize the specific distinction between man and the
animals should be the least tender in their views of animal
sufferings, and that Christians who accentuate that distinction
should be willing to spare animals pain at the cost of enhancing
their own. I conceive it then to be a primary duty of a modern
educator, at School or at College, to cultivate in his pupils, by
all the means in his power, the sympathetic sentiment towards the
animal world.
To turn to a less painful part of our subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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