Is not this a sentiment in which even science may fitly share? Are we justified in neglecting the evidence she offers, purchased in the past at such immeasurable agonies, and in demanding that year after year new victims shall be subjected to torture, only to demonstrate what none of us doubt? That is the chief question. For, if all compromise be persistently rejected by physiologists, there is danger that some day, impelled by the advancing growth of humane sentiment, society may confound in one common condemnation all experiments of this nature, and make the whole practice impossible, except in secret and as a crime. [_From_ LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE, _August, 1884_.] VIVISECTION. Omitting entirely any consideration of the ethics of vivisection, the only points to which in the present article the attention of the reader is invited are those in which scientific inquirers may be supposed to have a common interest. I. One danger to which scientific truth seems to be exposed is a peculiar tendency to underestimate the numberless uncertainties and contradictions created by experimentation upon living beings. Judging from the enthusiasm of its advocates, one would think that by this method of interrogating nature all fallacies can be detected, all doubts determined. But, on the contrary, the result of experimentation, in many directions, is to plunge the observer into the abyss of uncertainty. Take, for example, one of the simplest and yet most important questions possible,--the degree of sensibility in the lower animals. Has an infinite number of experiments enabled physiologists to determine for us the mere question of pain? Suppose an amateur experimenter in London, desirous of performing some severe operations upon frogs, to hesitate because of the extreme painfulness of his methods, what replies would he be likely to obtain from the highest scientific authorities of England as to the sensibility of these creatures? We may fairly judge their probable answers to such inquiries from their evidence already given before a royal commission.[A] [A] The contradictory opinions ascribed to most of the authorities quoted in this article are taken directly from the "Report of the Royal Commission on the Practice of Subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes,"--a Blue-Book Parliamentary Report.