observation. But is not this cruelty? and has a man a right to be cruel? No man has a right to be cruel; cruelty is a vice, it is degrading to man’s noble nature. But vivisection practised for scientific purposes is not cruel. Cruelty implies the wanton infliction of pain: there are people who delight in seeing a victim tortured; this is cruelty or savagery, and is a disgrace to man. Even to inflict pain without benefit is cruel and wrong; but not when it is inflicted on the brute creation for the benefit of man, unless the pain should be very great and the benefit very small. Certainly it is right to cultivate habits of kindness even to animals; but this matter must not be carried to excess.

The teaching of humane societies condemning all vivisection is due to the exaggeration of a good sentiment and to ignorance of first principles. For they suppose that sufferings inflicted on brute animals are a violation of their rights. Now we maintain that brute animals have no rights in the true sense of the word. To prove this thesis we must explain what a right is and how men get to have rights. A right is a moral claim to a thing, which claim other persons are obliged to respect. Since every man has a destiny appointed for him by his Creator, and which he is to work out by his own acts, he must have the means given him to do so. For to assign a person a task and not to give him the means of accomplishing it would be absurd. Therefore the Creator wants him to have those means, and forbids every one to deprive him of those means. Here is the foundation of rights. Every man, in virtue of the Creator’s will, has certain advantages or claims to advantages assigned him which no other man may infringe. Those advantages and claims constitute his rights, guaranteed him by the Creator; and all other men have the duty imposed on them to respect those rights. Thus rights and duties are seen to be correlative and inseparable; the rights lodged in one man beget duties in other men. The same Creator that assigns rights to one man lays upon all others duties to respect those rights, that thus every free being may have the means of working out its Heaven-appointed destiny.

Thus it is apparent that rights and duties suppose free beings, persons; now an irrational animal is not a person; it is not a free being, having a destiny to work out by its free acts; it is therefore incapable of having duties. Duties are matters of conscience; therefore they cannot belong to the brute animal; for it has no conscience. And, since rights are given to creatures because of the duties incumbent on them, brute animals are incapable of having rights. When a brute animal has served man’s purpose, it has reached its destiny.

III. But it is entirely different with man: there is what we may call an infinite distance between man and brute. Every man is created directly for the honor and service not of other men, but of God Himself: by serving God man must work out his own destiny—eternal happiness. In this respect all men are equal, having the same essence or nature and the same destiny. The poor child has as much right to attain eternal happiness as the rich child, the infant as much as the gray-bearded sire. Every one is only at the beginning of an endless existence, of which he is to determine the nature by his own free acts. In this infinite destiny lies the infinite superiority of man over the brute creation.

That all men are equal in their essential rights is the dictate of common-sense and of sound philosophy. This truth may not flatter kings and princes; but it is the charter of human rights, founded deeper and broader in nature and on the Creator’s will than any other claim of mankind. As order requires the subordination of lower natures to higher, so it requires equality of essential rights among beings of the same nature. Now all men are of the same nature, hence they have all the same essential rights.

If any people on earth must stand by these principles, certainly the American people must do so; for we have put them as the foundation-stones of our civil liberty. There is more wisdom than many, even of its admirers, imagine in the preamble to our Declaration of Independence; upon it we are to base the most important rights and duties which belong to Jurisprudence. The words of the preamble read as follows: “We hold these truths as self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I feel convinced, gentlemen, and I will take it for granted henceforth, unless you bring objections to the contrary, that you all agree with me on this important point that every man has a natural right to his life, a right which all other men are solemnly bound to respect. It is his chief earthly right. It is called an inalienable right; by which term the fathers of our liberty meant a right which under no circumstances can be lawfully disregarded. A man who takes it upon himself to deprive another of life commits two grievous wrongs: one towards his victim, whose most important right he violates, and one towards God, who has a right to the life and service of His creatures. “Thou shalt not kill” is a precept as deeply engraven on the human heart by reason itself as it was on the stone tables of the Ten Commandments by Revelation.

So far we have chiefly considered murder as a violation of man’s right to his life. We must now turn our attention to God’s right, which the murderer violates. It may indeed happen that a man willingly resigns his right to live, that he is tired of life, and longs and implores for some one to take it away. Can you then do it? You cannot. His life does not belong to him alone, but to God also, and to God principally; if you destroy it, you violate God’s right, and you will have to settle with Him. God wills this man to live and serve Him, if it were only by patient endurance of his sufferings.

For a man may be much ennobled and perfected by the practice of patience under pain and agony. Some of the noblest characters of history are most glorious for such endurance. The suicide rejects this greatness; he robs God of service and glory, he rebels against his Creator. Even Plato of old understood the baseness of suicide, when he wrote in his dialogue called “Phædon” that a man in this world is like a soldier stationed on guard; he must hold his post as long as his commander requires it; to desert it is cowardice and treachery; thus, he says, suicide is a grievous crime.

This being so, can a Doctor, or any other man, ever presume to contribute his share to the shortening of a person’s life by aiding him to commit suicide? We must emphatically say No, even though the patient should desire death: the Doctor cannot, in any case, lend his assistance to violate the right and the law of the Creator: “Thou shalt not kill.”

I have no doubt, gentlemen, that some of you have been saying to yourselves, Why does the lecturer insist so long upon a point which is so clear? Of course, none of us doubts that we can in no case aid a patient to commit suicide. My reason for thus insisting on this matter is that here again we are dealing with a living issue. There are to-day physicians and others who deny this truth, not in their secret practice only, but, of late, to justify their conduct, they have boldly formulated the thesis that present apparent expediency can lawfully be preferred to any higher consideration. Here is the fact. At a