Vivisection / by C.S. Lewis.

  • Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963.
Date:
[1947?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Vivisection / by C.S. Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    same people who will most contemptuously brush aside any consideration of animal suffering if it stands in the way of “research” will also, on another context, most vehemently deny that there is any radical difference between man and the other ani¬ mals. On the naturalistic view the beasts are at bottom just the same sort of thing as ourselves. Man is simply the cleverest of the anthropoids. All the grounds on which a Christian might defend vivisec¬ tion are thus cut from under our feet. We sacrifice other species to our own not because our own has any objective metaphysical privilege over others, but simply because it is ours. It may be very natural to have this loyalty to our own species, but let us hear no more from the naturalists about the “senti¬ mentality” of anti-vivisectionists. If loyalty to our own species, preference for man simply because we are men, is not a sentiment, then what is? It may be a good sentiment or a bad one. But a sentiment it certainly is. Try to base it on logic and see what happens! But the most sinister thing about modern vivisec¬ tion is this. If a mere sentiment justifies cruelty, why stop at a sentiment for the whole human race? There is also a sentiment for the white man against the black, for a Herrenvolk against the Non-Aryans, for “civilised” or “progressive” peoples against “savage” or “backward” peoples. Finally, for our own country, party, or class against others. Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then [9]