Heart and Science | Page 2

my reasons for writing the book, let me conclude by
telling you what I have kept out of the book.
It encourages me to think that we have many sympathies in common;
and among them, that most of us have taken to our hearts domestic pets.
Writing under this conviction, I have not forgotten my responsibility
towards you, and towards my Art, in pleading the cause of the harmless
and affectionate beings of God's creation. From first to last, you are
purposely left in ignorance of the hideous secrets of Vivisection. The
outside of the laboratory is a necessary object in my landscape--but I
never once open the door and invite you to look in. I trace, in one of my
characters, the result of the habitual practice of cruelty (no matter under
what pretence) in fatally deteriorating the nature of man--and I leave
the picture to speak for itself. My own personal feeling has throughout

been held in check. Thankfully accepting the assistance rendered to me
by Miss Frances Power Cobbe, by Mrs. H. M. Gordon, and by
Surgeon-General Gordon, C.B., I have borne in mind (as they have
borne in mind) the value of temperate advocacy to a good cause.
With this, your servant withdraws, and leaves you to the story.
II.
TO READERS IN PARTICULAR.
If you are numbered among those good friends of ours, who are
especially capable of understanding us and sympathising with us, be
pleased to accept the expression of our gratitude, and to pass over the
lines that follow.
But if you open our books with a mind soured by distrust; if you
habitually anticipate inexcusable ignorance where the course of the
story happens to turn on matters of fact; it is you, Sir or Madam, whom
I now want.
Not to dispute with you--far from it! I own with sorrow that your
severity does occasionally encounter us on assailable ground. But there
are exceptions, even to the stiffest rules. Some of us are not guilty of
wilful carelessness: some of us apply to competent authority, when we
write on subjects beyond the range of our own experience. Having thus
far ventured to speak for my colleagues, you will conclude that I am
paving the way for speaking next of myself. As our cousins in the
United States say--that is so.
In the following pages, there are allusions to medical practice at the
bedside; leading in due course to physiological questions which
connect themselves with the main interest of the novel. In traversing
this delicate ground, you have not been forgotten. Before the
manuscript went to the printer, it was submitted for correction to an
eminent London surgeon, whose experience extends over a period of
forty years.

Again: a supposed discovery in connection with brain disease, which
occupies a place of importance, is not (as you may suspect) the
fantastic product of the author's imagination. Finding his materials
everywhere, he has even contrived to make use of Professor
Ferrier--writing on the "Localisation of Cerebral Disease," and closing
a confession of the present result of post-mortem examination of brains
in these words: "We cannot even be sure, whether many of the changes
discovered are the cause or the result of the Disease, or whether the two
are the conjoint results of a common cause." Plenty of elbow room here
for the spirit of discovery.
On becoming acquainted with "Mrs. Gallilee," you will find her
talking--and you will sometimes even find the author talking--of
scientific subjects in general. You will naturally conclude that it is "all
gross caricature." No; it is all promiscuous reading. Let me spare you a
long list of books consulted, and of newspapers and magazines
mutilated for "cuttings"--and appeal to examples once more, and for the
last time.
When "Mrs. Gallilee" wonders whether "Carmina has ever heard of the
Diathermancy of Ebonite," she is thinking of proceedings at a
conversazione in honour of Professor Helmholtz (reported in the Times
of April 12, 1881), at which "radiant energy" was indeed converted into
"sonorous vibrations." Again: when she contemplates taking part in a
discussion on Matter, she has been slily looking into Chambers's
Encyclopaedia, and has there discovered the interesting conditions on
which she can "dispense with the idea of atoms." Briefly, not a word of
my own invention occurs, when Mrs. Gallilee turns the learned side of
her character to your worships' view.
I have now only to add that the story has been subjected to careful
revision, and I hope to consequent improvement, in its present form of
publication. Past experience has shown me that you have a sharp eye
for slips of the pen, and that you thoroughly enjoy convicting a novelist,
by post, of having made a mistake. Whatever pains I may have taken to
disappoint you, it is quite likely