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Animals, Morality and Robert Boyle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
In early life, the philosopher, theologian and scientist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) wrote extensively on moral matters. One of the extant early documents written in Boyle's hand deals with the morality of our treatment of non-human animals. In this piece (probably written about 1647) Boyle offered a number of arguments for extending moral concern to non-human animals. Since the later Boyle routinely vivisected or otherwise killed animals in his scientific experiments, we are left with the biographical questions, did his views change, and if so, why? as well as with the philosophical questions, what were his arguments and how good are they?
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- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , Summer 1996 , pp. 435 - 472
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1996
References
Notes
1 In what follows references to the Royal Society's Boyle Papers (hereafter BP) are by volume number and page or folio as appropriate, with recto and verso specified when necessary. These papers are now available on microfilm as Letters and Papers of Robert Boyle, edited by Hunter, Michael (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1990)Google Scholar. In quoting from the Boyle Papers I have omitted Boyle's deletions; his insertions are in angle brackets ((,)), and conjectural readings are in braces ({,}). Boyle used slashes (/,/) to enclose alternative words or phrases, and the manuscripts do not reveal any final decision on his part. Like most workers on the Boyle manuscripts, I owe a debt of gratitude to the Librarian and staff of the Royal Society Library, and also to Michael Hunter for his extremely helpful finding list. References to Boyle's published works are to Birch's, Thomas 1772 edition of The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols. (London, 1772; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966), hereafter Works.Google Scholar
2 I am following R. E. W. Maddison in taking 1647 as a plausible date of com position (The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle [London: Taylor & Fran cis, 1969], p. 41, n.). The MS is in the form of a letter (BP 37.186r-193v), but there is no indication of the intended recipient of the letter, if indeed there was one. Malcolm Oster suggests Boyle's Sherbourne neighbour, Nathaniel Highmore (Oster, Malcolm, “The ‘Beame of Diuinity’: Animal Suffering in the Early Thought of Robert Boyle,” British Journal for the History of Science, 22 [1989]: 151–80; reference at p. 161)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, but it also quite possible that the epistle form was merely a stylistic device adopted by Boyle. The MS is tran scribed as an Appendix to Oster's article. My transcription differs from his in minor details.
3 Boyle thought that building hospitals for “poore sicke, maimed & decrepit beasts” revealed “a Compassion that possibly degenerates into Fondnesse” (BP37.193r).
4 For an important recent discussion of the “bewildering array of views about animals and their souls” in this period, see Harrison, Peter “Animal Souls, Metempsychosis, and Theodicy in Seventeenth-Century English Thought,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 31 (1993): 519–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 G[odfrey] G[oodman], The Creatures Pray sing God: or, the Religion ofdumbe Creatures (London, 1622), pp. 3, 5, and Edward Topsell, The Historie of Four-footed Beaste's (London, 1607), Epistle Dedicatory.
6 Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 125Google Scholar.
7 Howell, W., The Spirit of Prophecy (London, 1679), p. 266Google Scholar.
8 Leibniz, G. W., Nouveaux essais sur I'entendement humain (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1962), translated by Remnant, Peter and Bennett, Jonathan as New Essays on Human Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Preface, p. 67Google Scholar.
9 Aristotle, Historia Animalium, translated by Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth and revised by Jonathan Barnes, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), Vol. 1, 8.588a16–26Google Scholar.
10 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, la.78.4resp.Google Scholar
11 Geach, Peter, God and the Soul (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 38Google Scholar.
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13 See, for example, Cottingham, John, ‘“A Brute to the Brutes?’: Descartes' Treatment of Animals,” Philosophy, 53 (1978): 551–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Descartes to More, February 5, 1649, in Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Adam, C. and Tannery, P., 11 vols. (Paris, 1964–76), 5. 278–9Google Scholar, hereafter AT, translated by Anthony Kenny, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, edited and translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Mur doch and Anthony Kenny, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 1991), 3.336, hereafter CSMK.
15 Marginal note to BP 37.186r. Although Boyle rejects the Pythagorean prec edent, he goes on to suggest that their compassion is correct, even if based on mistaken metaphysics.
16 Malebranche, Nicholas, The Search after Truth, translated by Lennon, T. and Olscamp, P. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1980), 4.11, p. 323Google Scholar. Spink notes that the same Augustinian argument is to be found in J.-M. Darmanson's La Bête transformée en machine (1684), in Spink, J. S., French FreeThought from Gassendito Voltaire (London: Athlone Press, 1960), p. 231Google Scholar. For Le Grand, see, e.g., Le Grand, Antoine, An Entire Body of Philosophy Accord ing to the Principles of the Famous Renate Des Cartes, translated by Blome, R. with an Introduction by Richard A. Watson (London, 1694; rpt. New York and London: Johnson Reprint), p. 252Google Scholar.
17 Digby, Kenelm, Two Treatises. In the one of which The Nature of Bodies; in the other, The Nature of Mans Sovle; is looked into: in way of discovery, of the Immortality of Reasonable Sovles (Paris, 1644; rpt. New York: Garland, 1978), PrefaceGoogle Scholar.
18 Boyle, Robert, Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (hereafter Usefulness I), in Works, 2.75-6Google Scholar.
19 The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. (London 1823; rpt. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1963), 4: 468; Porter, Noah, “Marginalia Locke-a-na,” in Thomas Burnet, John Locke and Noah Porter, Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Human Understanding: Five Tracts (New York: Garland, 1984), p. 48Google Scholar.
20 Grand, Le, An Entire Body of Philosophy, p. 226Google Scholar.
21 Charles Gilden to Charles Blount, in The Miscellaneous Works of Charles Blount, Esq., I. The Oracles of Reason, &c, by Blount, Chas., Esq.; Mr. Gilden and others (London, 1693), “15. That the Soul is Matter,” p. 190Google Scholar.
22 “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8.22).
23 The Diary of John Evelyn, edited by de Beer, E. S., 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), March 9, 1677, 4.106Google Scholar.
24 Goodman, , The Creatures Praysing God, p. 29Google Scholar.
25 Edwards, Thomas, Gangrana: or A Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England these four last years (London, 1646), p. 27Google Scholar.
26 See Wesley, John, “The General Deliverance,” in Wesley's Works, 14 vols. (1872; rpt. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1958-59), Vol. 6, pp. 241–52Google Scholar.
27 Ward, Keith, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), p. 202Google Scholar.
28 Thomas Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, Which is that of the Vital and Sensitive of Man (London, 1683; rpt. with an Introduction by Solomon Diamond, Gainesville, FL: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1971), 1.1,3. Like Gassendi, Willis held the souls of brutes to be corporeal, but he did not thereby hold them to be purely passive. See further Wright, John P., “Locke, Willis, and the Seventeenth-century Epicurean Soul,” in Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought, edited by Osler, Margaret J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 239–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Osler, Margaret J., “Baptizing Epicurean Atom ism: Pierre Gassendi on the Immortality of the Soul,” in Religion, Science and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall, edited by Osler, M. J. and Farber, P. L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 163–83Google Scholar.
29 Bayle, Pierre, Dictionaire Historique et Critique, 5th ed., 5 vols. (Amsterdam, 1734), and Le Grand, An Entire Body of Philosophy, p. 225Google Scholar.
30 O[verton], R[ichard], Man's Mortallitie (London [title page: Amsterdam], 1644; rpt. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1968), p. 26Google Scholar. For a discussion of the authorship, see Frank, Joseph, The Levellers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Appendix: “The Authorship of Mans Mortallitie.”
31 Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method, §5, AT6.58, CSMK 1.140.
32 Locke, John, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Nidditch, P. H. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 2.11.11Google Scholar.
33 Descartes to More, February 5, 1649, AT 5.277, CSMK 3.365-6.
34 AT4.576, CSMK3.304.
35 Willis, Two Discourses, 1.2, 5.
36 Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.11.11.
37 Liebniz to Truer, May 21,1708, quoted in Jolley, Nicholas, Leibniz and Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 117Google Scholar.
38 Newton made a similar point: “Ad Religionem non requiritur Status animae separatus sed resurrectio cum memoria continuata” [Not a separate exist ence of the soul, but a resurrection with a continuation of memory is the requirement of religion] (memoranda by David Gregory, May 5, 6, 7, 1694, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, edited by Turnbull, H. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), Vol. 3, pp. 336, 339)Google Scholar.
39 Young, Robert M., “Animal Soul,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Paul, 6 vols. (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1967), 1.123aGoogle Scholar.
40 Howe, The Living Temple, pp. 89-90.
41 “C'est dommage que le sentiment de M. Des Cartes soit si difficile à soutenir, & si éloigné de la vraisemblance; car il est d'ailleurs très-avantageux à la vraie foi, & c'est l'unique raison qui empêche quelques personnes de s'en départir” (Bayle, Dictionaire, “Rorarius,” p. 906).
42 The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 1, Ethics, edited and translated by Curley, E. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 3.57s, 4.37s1Google Scholar.
43 Ray, John, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (London, 1691), pp. 38–40Google Scholar.
44 Bentley, Richard, Eight Boyle Lectures on Atheism (London 1692–1693; rpt. New York: Garland, 1976), lect. 2, p. 29Google Scholar.
45 AP 37.186r; “you” omitted in MS.
46 AP 37.186r-186v.
47 More, Henry, An Antidote Against Atheism, in A Collection of Several Philo sophical Writings, 2 vols. (London, 1662, 2nd ed.; rpt. New York: Garland, 1978), Vol. 1, p. 63Google Scholar.
48 More, Henry, The Immortality of the Soul, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, 2 vols. (London, 1662, 2nd ed.; rpt. New York: Garland, 1978), 2.5.6, 2.82, 2.17.7,2.137Google Scholar.
49 Boyle recalls that as a child “the first course I tooke to satisfy my Curiosity, was to instruct my selfe in the Aristotelian Doctrine, as that whose Principles I found generally acquiesc'd in by the Vniversitys & Schools, & by numbers of celebrated Writers, celebrated for little lesse, then Oraculous. But I had scarce (well) acquainted my selfe with the Peripateticke Theory, before I was strongly tempted to doubt it's Solidity. For the Commands of my Parents engaging me to visit diuers forreigne Countrys, I could not but in my Travells meet with many things capable to make me distrust the Doctrine (wherewith) I had freshly been imbu'd” (BP 38.80r).
Thus, “tho I much reuerenced the rare abilityes of that (Greate) Philosopher,” the Aristotelian doctrine was found wanting. Nonetheless, the views of Aristotle on the soul, as opposed to his views on natural philosophy, are nowhere explicitly rejected by Boyle. Even though Boyle quotes with apparent approval Descartes on perception, he is far from rejecting other possible theoretical stances in this area.
50 Boyle, Robert, The Second Part of the Christian Virtuoso (hereafter CV2), in Works, 6.748-49Google Scholar.
51 Boyle, Robert, The First Part of the Christian Virtuoso (hereafter CV1), in Works, 5.508Google Scholar.
52 Boyle, CV1, 5.518.
53 Ibid. Although Boyle was contemptuous of “the great noise made by vulgar Philosophers of their Substantial Forms” (BP 9.28r), he entered the follow ing caveat: “whenever I shall speak indefinitely of substantial forms, I would always be understood to except the reasonable soul, that is said to inform the human body, which declaration I here desire may be taken notice of once for all … Nor am I willing to treat of the origin of qualities in beasts; partly because I would not be ingaged to examine of what nature their souls are, and partly because it is difficult enough in most cases (at least for one that is compassionate enough) either to make experiments upon living animals, or to judge what influence their life may have upon the change of qualities produced by such experiments” (Origine of Forms and Qualities, in Works, 3.12).
54 Overton, Richard, Man Wholly Mortal (London, 1655)Google Scholar. Noting that “Neither Milton nor Overton was an atheist,” J. R. Jacob suggests that “less radical thinkers saw a threat of atheism or at least of disorder in the mortalist's posi tion.” Jacob explicitly includes Boyle in this group (Jacob, J. R., Robert Boyle and the English Revolution [New York: Burt Franklin, 1977], p. 114)Google Scholar.
55 Digby, Two Treatises, 2.86. C. P. Hill says that “As a scientist,” Digby “was by the standards of his day a mediocre amateur, and the greatest British practi tioners, like Boyle and Newton, thought very little of him” (Who's Who in History, Vol. 3, England 1603-1714 [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965], p. 77), but I do not know of any textual support for the claim that Boyle “thought very little” of Digby. There is, however, ample textual support for the opposite claim. At BP 26.162, for example, Boyle refers to “our deseruedly famous Countryman Sr Kenelme Digby” in his discussion of atomism, and in March 1660, Oldenburg noted that his writing to Boyle of his “dislike of Mr. Digby … may be a mistake, perhaps” (Hall, A. R. and Hall, M. B., eds. and trans., The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, 11 vols. [Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965], 1.358, hereafter Oldenberg Correspondence)Google Scholar.
56 See, for example, Hick, John, Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976)Google Scholar. Of course what Frank calls “the tone of skepticism, even on occasion of mockery, which pervades much of Overton's text” (Frank, The Levellers, p. 43) is not to be looked for, still less to be found, in Hick. For some logical difficulties involved in this position see Macintosh, J. J., “Reincarna tion and Relativized Identity,” Religious Studies, 25 (1989): 153–65, and the ensuing debate in the same journalCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Temple Smith, 1972), pp. 143–44Google Scholar. Hill adds that the Ordination “proved unenforceable” (ibid.). For further details on the Mortalists, see Hill's, Milton and the English Revolution (London: Faber, 1977), chap. 25Google Scholar, and Burns, Norman T., Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It was not until 1677 that the punishment for heresy was reduced from death by burning to excommunication, although the last per son to be burned for heresy in England was Edward Wightman in 1612.
58 Boyle, CV2, 6.751-2.
59 BP 37.186v-187r; Boyle, in Works, 1.574.
60 Boyle, Robert, An Essay of the Great Effects of Even Languid & Unheeded Motion, in Works, 5.10Google Scholar.
61 Descartes, Dioptrique 5, AT 6.129, and cf. Traité de l'Homme, AT 11.177, CSMK 1.106; and Boyle, CT2, 6.749. See further Macintosh, J. J., “Perception and Imagination in Descartes, Boyle and Hooke,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 13 (1983): 327–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sutton, John, “Connecting Memory Traces: Studies of Neurophilosophical Theories of Memory, Mental Repre sentation, and Personal Identity from Descartes to New Connectionism” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Sydney, 1993)Google Scholar. The belief in such prenatal influence was common, with Jacob's early piece of skullduggery (recorded in Genesis 30) providing the locus classicus; “reformed philoso phy” simply offered a new mechanism to underpin a generally accepted view.
62 BP 37.187r.
63 Ibid.; Jonah 4.11.
64 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, la2ae 40.3 ad 1; BP 37.187r-187v.
65 BP 37.190r; Matthew 12.11, Luke 14.5; Exodus 20.8-10.
66 Exodus 23.12.
67 Bentham, Jeremy, The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; rpt. New York: Hafner, 1948), p. 311, n.1Google Scholar.
68 Wollaston, William, The Religion of Nature Delineated (London, 1722; 2nd ed. 1724; rpt. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1974), §2, obs. 8, pp. 34–35Google Scholar, emphasis in the original. Wittgenstein makes a similar claim about non-humans and their ignorance of the future in the Philosophical Investiga tions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953, Part 2, §1). It is an interesting claim, but I do not know what the evidence is for it.
69 BP 37.187V.
70 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.33.
71 Goodman, The Creatures Pray sing God, p. 21.
72 BP 37.191r; Numbers 22.
73 Aquinas, Thomas, On the Power of God (Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei), literally translated by the English Dominican Fathers (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1933), 6.5 ad 3Google Scholar.
74 BP 37.192v. Right parenthesis omitted in MS.
75 BP 14.16r, transcribed in Harwood, John T., ed., The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), p. 238Google Scholar.
76 BP 37.192V.
77 BP 37.193r.
78 See, for example, the early piece “Of ye Atomicall Philosophy,” BP 26.16275, especially 170-71.
79 BP 7.158r;also at BP 1.35, 2.136.
80 Boyle, Robert, “A Discourse touching Occasional Meditations,” prefaced to Occasional Reflections Upon Several Subjects, in Works, 2.341Google Scholar.
81 BP 37.187v-188r. Boyle notes textual backing for his claim at Psalms 50.1012, Haggai 2.8 and Ezekiel 16.17-19. Considerations about the pre-fall status of non-human animals were also used to give credence to this view: “Creatures were first created in Paradise. Then surely they were not so much ordained for slaughter, and mans vse, as for the setting forth of Gods glory” (Goodman, The Creatures Praysing God, p. 29).
82 BP 7.187v-188v.
83 See, for example, Psalm 147.9 and Psalm 104.10-22.
84 BP 37.189r. The command to Noah is at Genesis 6.19-20.
85 BP 37.189v, 189v marg.
86 For an interesting contemporary discussion of this issue see Ferré, Frederick, “Theodicy and the Status of Animals,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 23 (1986): 23–34Google Scholar. For discussions of the ways in which the major religions view the question of animal experimentation see Regan, Tom, ed., Animal Sacrifices: Religious Perspectives on the Use of Animals in Science (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
87 BP 9.40r.
88 BP 37.187V.
89 Not only Cartesian philosophers would be willing to make a case against such a suppressed premise. Aquinas, for example, argued that: “it would be absurd to speak of having friendship … for a horse” (Summa Theologies, 2a2ae 23.1 resp.). Though Descartes is concerned with horses, and St. Thomas with friendship, the conclusion in each case is the same.
90 BP 191v, marg. Nimrod is mentioned as a mighty hunter at Genesis 10.8-9.
91 In his early essay “On sin,” Boyle offers Domitian as an exemplar of “Egre gious Wickedness” (Harwood, The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle, p. 145). However, though Domitian was clearly not a model of morality, Betty Radice has suggested that “there is no evidence of the widespread per secution attributed to him by later Christian apologists” (Who's Who in the Ancient World [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, p. 107a]).
92 BP 37.191v. Boyle seems to be simply wrong about this: “it was widely believed in the early modern period that butchers were ineligible for jury ser vice in capital cases, owing to their cruel inclinations. There seems to have been no legal authority for this notion, but it was held throughout the sev enteenth and eighteenth centuries by scores of commentators who should have known better” (Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 295).
93 Schopenhauer, taking Kant to task, writes: “so one is only to have compassion on animals for the sake of practice, and they are as it were the pathological phantom on which to train one's sympathy with man!” (Schopenhauer, Arthur, The Basis of Morality, translated by Bullock, A. B. [London, 1841], chap. 6, p. 94)Google Scholar.
94 BP 37.189v. The references are to Exodus 20.12 and Deuteronomy 22.6-7.
95 BP 37.190v-191r; Proverbs 12.10; Numbers 22.21-33. The “judgment with out mercy” to “[him] that hath shewed no mercy” is promised at James 2.13.
96 BP 37.188r-188v. The reference is to Genesis 1.31: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” Boyle here omits the point that was often made on the other side: that the earlier “Generall Suruey” (after the creation of the other animals, but before the creation of humans, Genesis 1.25) simply led to the judgment “good” as opposed to “very good.” See, for example, Burroughes, Jeremiah, Gospel Reconciliation (London, 1657), p. 6Google Scholar.
97 BP 37.190r. Richard Robinson has pointed out that the extended charity Boyle recommends is not in fact recommended in the Synoptic Gospels. (Robinson, Richard, An Atheist's Values [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964], p. 152)Google Scholar. James Gaffney agrees: “we do not find… any explicit suggestion, by either doctrine or example, that caring for animals has a place in the follow ing of Jesus” (Gaffney, James, “The Relevance of Animal Experimentation to Roman Catholic Ethical Methodology,” in Animal Sacrifices: Religious Per spectives on the Use of Animals in Science, edited by Regan, Tom [Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986], pp. 149–70; reference at p. 152)Google Scholar.
98 Gaffney, “Animal Experimentation,” p. 151.
99 BP 37.193v. Boyle's “other Case” is to be found at Luke 14.13-14: “when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recom pensed at the resurrection of the just.”
100 Jacob, , Robert Boyle and the English Revolution, p. 114Google Scholar.
101 BP 37.182r.
102 See J. J. Macintosh, “Perception and Imagination in Descartes, Boyle and Hooke.”
103 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.17. There are manuscript passages in which Boyle makes the point even more strongly. For example: “I think yt Adam alone, on ye account of his Immaterial soul endowd with reason & free will, was a more excellent creature than al ye (beasts &) birds & other animals he gave (names) to, with ye whole teraequeous globe yt they inhabited, to boot” (BP 1.66r).
104 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.67. Experimenting on humans was clearly of interest to Boyle. Later in this same work he returned to the topic when discussing the strong emetic crocus metallorum (an oxysulphide of antimony). Noting that after two ounces of crocus metallorum had been injected into a dog, “he vomited up life and all, upon the straw, whereon they had laid him,” Boyle “proposed, that if it could be done, without either too much danger or cruelty, trial might be made upon some human bodies, especially those of male factors. And some months after, a foreign ambassador, a curious person, at that time residing in London, did me the honour to visit me, and informed me, that he had causedtrial to be made with infusion of crocus metallorum, upon an inferiour domestick of his, that deserved to have been hanged; but that the fellow, as soon as ever the injection began to be made, did (either really or craftily) fall into a swoon, whereby being unwilling to prosecute so hazardous an experiment, they desisted; without seeing any other effect of it, save … that it wrought once downward with him, which yet might, perhaps, be occasioned for fear or anguish” (Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.89). The foreign ambassador was the French ambassador, the Due de Bordeaux. The experi ment took place in 1657 (Timothy Clarke to Oldenburg, April/May 1668, Oldenburg Correspondence, 4.357, 366). For further details see Frank, R. G., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), chap. 7, “Oxonians on Animal Heat and the Nature of the Blood 1656-1666.”Google Scholar
105 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.84.
106 BP 5.96r; Occasional Meditations, 2.349. Boyle sometimes adds a third book, that of conscience (see, e.g., BP 8.123), but is in general content with the more usual two.
107 Boyle to Clodius, in Works, 6.55. Dating as suggested in Maddison, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle, p. 84.
108 Boyle, Usefulness 1,2.14.
109 Quoted by Solomon Diamond in his Introduction to Willis's Two Discourses, p. v. Boyle knew Willis personally; indeed it was Willis's recommendation of his then assistant Robert Hooke that secured Hooke a similar post with Boyle. They were in close communication when Boyle was in Oxford-though Willis was only five years older, Frank speaks, somewhat surprisingly, of Boyle as being one of “Willis's younger friends and proteges” (Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists, p. 169)-but Boyle mentions Willis on the half dozen or so occasions when he does refer to him in the published works with a kind of distanced respect. He was clearly dubious about Willis's chemical theories, and does not refer to his neurophysiological views in connections where one might have expected such a reference although, as his correspond ence makes clear, he was acquainted with his fellow Royal Society member's works, including his Cerebri anatome.
110 On the importance of the publicity of experiment, their repeatability and the variety of the witnessing audience(s), see Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air-Pump Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
111 Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects (Made, for the most Part, in a New Pneumatical Engine), Exp. 41, A Digression containing some Doubts touching Respira tion, in Works, 1.106-107.
112 Ibid., 1.110.
113 Ibid., 1.109.
114 For a more sympathetic account of these experiments and their importance in the history of science see Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists, chap. 6, “New Experiments on Respiration, 1659-1665.”Google Scholar
115 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.88.
116 Boyle, Robert, “The History of Fluidity and Firmness,” Certain Physiological Essays, in Works, 1.410.Google Scholar
117 Boyle, The Excellency of Theology, in Works, 4.14.
118 Boyle, Robert, “A Brief Account of the Utilities of Hygroscopes,” Tracts con sisting of Observations about the Saltness of the Sea, in Works, 3.795Google Scholar.
119 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.86.
120 Shugg, Wallace, “Humanitarian Attitudes in Early Animal Experiments,” Annals of Science, 24, 3 (1968): 227–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
121 Ibid., p. 232; Hooke quoted from Gunther, R. T., Early Science in Oxford, Vol. 6, The Life and Work of Robert Hooke: Part I (1930; rpt. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), p. 217Google Scholar. Shugg notes Evelyn's comment: “This was an experiment of more cruelty than pleased me.”
122 For Hooke's willingness to comment on Boyle's writings, see, for example, BP 10.116; for his assumption of an attitude he knew would be agreeable to Boyle, see his 1683 letter to Boyle concerning Hobbes, in Works, 6.486.
123 Boyle, CV2, 6.749.
124 Boyle, Origine of Forms and Qualities, in Works, 3.12.
125 Boyle, Usefulness I, 2.38-9.
126 See, for example, BP 2.15.
127 Jean Baptiste Duhamel to Oldenburg, October 16/26,1673 (Oldenburg Correspondence, 10.298, 299-300).
128 BP 2.18-19.
129 More, Antidote, 3.11, p. 121; CV1, 6.689 (BP 1.125 has “dare not” for “cannot”); Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.19.1. Aristotle had argued (De Anima, 431a15-17) that “the soul never thinks without an image,” and St. Thomas agreed: “In the present state of life in which the soul is united to a passible body, it is impossible for our intellect to understand anything actually, except by turning to phantasms” (Summa Theologiae 1.84.7 resp.).
130 God is required in two ways: to create the soul and perform the “physical miracle” (BP 2.62) of joining it to the body; and to sustain the laws (which are not laws of nature, and are not mechanically explicable) that allow body and soul to interact. For further details of Boyle's arguments see Macintosh, J. J., “Boyle and Locke on Miracles and God's Existence,” in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, edited by Hunter, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 193–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Macintosh, J. J., “Robert Boyle's Epistemology: The Interaction between Scientific and Religious Knowledge,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 6 (1992): 91–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
131 Oster, “The ‘Beame’ of Divinity,” p. 172.
132 Boyle commenting on himself as a young man, BP 37.175r.
133 In writing this paper I have benefited from comments from Alan Rudrum, from my students in the universities of Auckland and Calgary, from my colleague Margaret Osler and from two anonymous referees for Dialogue. As well, Keith Thomas's Man and the Natural World has been indispensable.