The (almost really) Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

Mr. Justice T.: Oh, come in, Smith! So glad you’ll join us in a midnight cigar. Carver and I were just talking over the beating you’ve had at Oxford—“Science versus Sentiment” shall we call it? You don’t look the worse for it, though. Beating agrees with your constitution, I fancy!
Mr. John Smith, M.A.: Well, perhaps we don’t know when we are beaten, as Napoleon said of us. There are more than 5000 members of Convocation, while those who voted were 10 short of the Number of the Beast. But the question is disposed of, I admit. It takes a bigger question than that to tear the Briton from his own fireside. It must be something that touches him in a more sensitive place than his heart!
Sir Samuel Carver, F.R.C.S.: And now it’s all over, don’t you think, between ourselves, it’s a little illiberal of you and your friends to anathematise a branch of Science which some of our best men will tell you has done real service to the human race?
Mr. Smith: Speaking for my party generally (of course there are individual exceptions), we don’t anathematise it.
Sir S. Carver: Well, at any rate you did your best to put an end to it in Oxford?
Mr. Smith (smiling): Most certainly not!
Mr. Justice T.: This is interesting. Do tell us, Smith, what it was you really wanted. I always fancied the papers exaggerated the thing. As they put it, you hadn’t a leg to stand on, moral or intellectual.
Mr. Smith: I am quite aware of it. Morally, we are bigots: intellectually, idiots. We ignore all the good that Vivisection, properly conducted, is proved to have done. We desire to exclude it entirely from our University, or, failing that, at any rate to hamper it with restrictions beyond what the Legislature has thought sufficient.
Mr. Justice T.: So the papers say.
Mr. Smith: Yet, in fact, we fully recognise the good it has done. We do not plead for its total exclusion, but only that it shall not be used for mere teaching-purposes, and that for purposes of research it shall not be practised without anæsthetics.
Sir S. Carver: I quite admit, with many of my scientific brethren, that it should not be used for teaching-purposes.
Mr. Justice T.: And I beg to point out that you have a solemn promise, from the present Professor, that it shall not be so used.
Mr. Smith: That of course would suffice during his tenure of office. We wished to have a security for the future: and I dare say, if we had asked no more than this, we might have got an enactment passed, embodying the Professor’s promise. The real bone of contention was that we wished it enacted that, even for purposes of research, the Oxford Professor should not perform painful experiments without anæsthetics.
Sir S. Carver: I can assure you that, in my own practice, I always use anæsthetics, excepting when their use would nullify the experiment. Such cases are rare, but they do happen; for instance, in investigating the action of the nerves.
Mr. Smith: I am not prepared to deny that cases may arise where the infliction of pain is justified by the importance of the object. But is it a very extravagant boon to ask that in a University whose function so largely consists in teaching the young, this one kind of vivisection should be omitted? There are many of us who do not think this kind of vivisection justified at all, and many, I should hope, of the young to whom the very thought that such things are done in the midst of us is a painful one. Is it quite outrageous to ask that their feelings should be spared this, so long as such research can be conducted in other places?
Mr. Justice T.: Oh, but your friends who call it unjustifiable are clearly out of court. They are setting up as better judges than the Legislature!
Mr. Smith: Madness, indeed! How could we hint that the Legislature is fallible? No scientific man has ever breathed a suspicion of its fallibility in the other direction, by too much restriction!
Sir S. Carver: There, I admit, you score one.
Mr. Justice T.: But you’re not going to have it all your own way, my dear fellow! I wish you had been here in the evening, to hear some of the inconsistencies of your side. Fox-hunting, now. With all your fine feelings about giving pain, what right have you to go and see a fox hunted to death, merely for sport?
Mr. Smith: Personally, I claim no such right. All pain, inflicted for sport, is abhorrent to me. But I must allow that the question is a mixed one, as to some sport. Where, for instance, wild beasts have to be exterminated for the safety of man, it seems almost inevitable that the hunter should enjoy the excitement of the chase. But that is a totally different matter from keeping up the breed of some animals, such as foxes, for the sole purpose of sport. That I don’t justify for a moment.
Mr. Justice T.: As to pigeon-shooting, now?
Mr. Smith (warmly): Utterly and entirely unjustifiable.
Mr. Justice T.: But, as the ladies were saying just now, the dear Prince goes to Hurlingham!
Mr. Smith: The dear Princess doesn’t.
Sir S. Carver: Had you there, Judge! You can’t press the question of sport, unless your man’s a sportsman. But you are not a vegetarian, Smith, are you? I suppose you enjoy your turtle-soup, your veal-cutlet, your lobster-salad, as much as most men? Are you aware of the wanton cruelty that is practised in furnishing you with a dinner? Set the vivisectionists against the butchers, in the way of giving pain!
Mr. Smith: Not for one moment would I justify brutal cruelty in any one. But which is worst, think you, in the sight of God (who judges by the heart, not the outward act), the ignorant butcher, brought up from childhood to witness brutality and who has never fully realized what he is doing in torturing God’s creatures, or the educated and intelligent vivisectionist, who realizes to the last iota all the pain he is giving, and yet deliberately inflicts it for an unworthy object, some meaningless point of science, or perhaps merely to gratify his curiosity?
Mr. Justice T.: True enough. Corruptio optimi pessima.
Mr. Smith: And may I not turn the tables on you for a moment, dear Sir Samuel? When will you and your brother-physiologists take in hand this burning question (I hardly know whether, in this age of burning questions, there is one more vital than this), how to put an end to the heart-sickening cry, that rises from the whole brute-creation, that man, their masters, is needlessly torturing them for his own selfish ends? When will you teach us, in words that all may understand, the plain laws of physiology, so that our horses (for instance) may no longer suffer from bearing-reins, and blinkers, and over-driving? What fairer field of experiment could you desire than to ascertain some painless method for killing the creatures we need for food? Depend upon it, the first vivisectionist that does this for us, and lets us sit down to our meals with the certainty that no needless pain has been given in providing them, will have his reward, even in this life, if the blessings of thousands on thousands of grateful hearts be any sufficient reward; and in the great day of account it shall be said to him, “inasmuch as thou hast done it to one of the least of these My creatures, thou hast done it unto Me”!
Mr. Justice T.: You are getting excited, Smith. Allow me to suggest that it is time for bed.