eel morally bound to inflict no superfluous
suffering, and ought, consequently, to employ anaesthetics, wherever
they would not unduly interfere with the conduct of the experiment; to
resort, as far as possible, to the lower rather than the higher
organisms, as being less susceptible of pain; and to limit their
experiments, both in number and duration, as far as is consistent with
the objects for which they are permitted to perform them. This whole
question, however, of our relation to the lower animals is one which is
fraught with much difficulty, and supplies a good instance of the range
of subjects within which the moral sentiment is probably in the course
of development. Recent researches, and, still more, recent speculations,
have tended to impress us with the nearness of our kinship to other
animals, and, hence, our sympathies with them and our interest in their
welfare have been sensibly quickened. The word philanthropy no longer
expresses the most general of the sympathetic feelings, and we seem to
require some new term which shall denote our fellow-feeling with the
whole sentient creation.

Such is a sample, and I must repeat that it is intended only as a
sample, of the class of questions to which, as it seems to me, the moral
test still admits of further application. Morality, or the science and
art of conduct, had its small beginnings, I conceive, in the primeval
household and has only attained its present grand proportions by gradual
increments, derived partly from the semi-conscious operations of the
human intelligence adapting itself to the circumstances in which it is
placed, partly from the conscious meditations of reflective men. That it
is likely to advance in the future, as it has done in the past,
notwithstanding the many hindrances to its progress which confessedly
exist, is, I think, an obvious inference from experience. We may not
unreasonably hope that there will be a stricter sense of justice, a more
complete realisation of duty, more delicacy of feeling, a greater
refinement of manners, more kindliness, quicker and wider sympathies in
the coming generations than there are amongst ourselves. I have
attempted, in this Essay, briefly to delineate the nature of the
feelings on which this progress depends, and of the considerations by
which it is guided, as well as to indicate some few out of the many
directions which it is likely to take in the future. In the former part
of my task, I am aware that