Introduction

‘Science and Literature’ was the Romanes Lecture delivered in Oxford in 1968 and published in Encounter in January 1969. The essay on Animal Experimentation represents for the year 1966 the Research Defence Society’s annual attempt to counteract the propaganda of those who would like to prohibit the use of animals in biological and medical research, perhaps because the welfare of animals genuinely means more to them than the welfare of human beings. Some thinkers of the twentieth century believe that civilized society is the victim of a nervous ailment. Putting together a number of published lectures and writing an overall introduction sounds an easy enough task, but in reality it was not so.