that of a brave man because he was the first who dared to appear
in the streets of this rainy island with an umbrella.


THE OLD LINE BETWEEN MAN AND BEAST

But there is still a distinction to be clung to by those who dare
not tell themselves the truth about the medical profession
because they are so helplessly dependent on it when death
threatens the household. That distinction is the line that
separates the brute from the man in the old classification.
Granted, they will plead, that we are all cruel; yet the tame-
stag-hunter does not hunt men; and the sportsman who lets a leash
of greyhounds loose on a hare would be horrified at the thought
of letting them loose on a human child. The lady who gets her
cloak by flaying a sable does not flay a negro; nor does it ever
occur to her that her veal cutlet might be improved on by a slice
of tender baby.

Now there was a time when some trust could be placed in this
distinction. The Roman Catholic Church still maintains, with what
it must permit me to call a stupid obstinacy, and in spite of St.
Francis and St. Anthony, that animals have no souls and no
rights; so that you cannot sin against an animal, or against God
by anything you may choose to do to an animal. Resisting the
temptation to enter on an argument as to whether you may not sin
against your own soul if you are unjust or cruel to the least of
those whom St. Francis called his little brothers, I have only to
point out here that nothing could be more despicably
superstitious in the opinion of a vivisector than the notion that