timately it was accepted by the
editor of _The Fortnightly Review_. Mr. Dodgson had a peculiar
horror of vivisection. I was once walking in Oxford with him when a
certain well-known professor passed us. "I am afraid that man
vivisects," he said, in his gravest tone. Every year he used to get a
friend to recommend him a list of suitable charities to which he
should subscribe. Once the name of some Lost Dogs' Home appeared in
this list. Before Mr. Dodgson sent his guinea he wrote to the
secretary to ask whether the manager of the Home was in the habit of
sending dogs that had to be killed to physiological laboratories for
vivisection. The answer was in the negative, so the institution got
the cheque. He did not, however, advocate the total abolition of
vivisection--what reasonable man could?--but he would have liked to
see it much more carefully restricted by law. An earlier letter of his
to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on the same subject is sufficiently
characteristic to deserve a place here. Be it noted that he signed it
"Lewis Carroll," in order that whatever influence or power his
writings had gained him might tell in the controversy.

VIVISECTION AS A SIGN OF THE TIMES.

_To the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette."_

Sir,--The letter which appeared in last week's
_Spectator_, and which must have saddened the heart of
every one who read it, seems to suggest a question which has
not yet been asked or answered with sufficient clearness,
and that is, How far may vivisection be regarded as a sign
of the times, and a fair specimen of that higher
civilisation which a purely secular State education is to
give us? In that much-vaunted panacea for all human ills we
are promised not only increase of knowledge, but also a
higher moral character; any momentary doubt on this point
which we may feel is set at rest at once by quoting the
great crucial instance of Germany. The syllogism, if it
deserves the name, is usually stated thus: Germany has a
higher scientific education than England; Germany has a
lower average of crime than England; _ergo_, a
scientific education tends to improve moral conduct. Some
old-fashioned logician might perhaps whisper to himself,
"Praemissis particularibus nihil probatur," but such a
remark, now that Aldrich is out of date, would only excite a
pitying smile. May we, then, regard the practice of
vivisection a