t its very
worst. Indeed no criminal has yet had the impudence to argue as
every vivisector argues. No burglar contends that as it is admittedly
important to have money to spend, and as the object of burglary is to
provide the burglar with money to spend, and as in many instances it has
achieved this object, therefore the burglar is a public benefactor
and the police are ignorant sentimentalists. No highway robber has yet
harrowed us with denunciations of the puling moralist who allows his
child to suffer all the evils of poverty because certain faddists think
it dishonest to garotte an alderman. Thieves and assassins understand
quite well that there are paths of acquisition, even of the best things,
that are barred to all men of honor. Again, has the silliest burglar
ever pretended that to put a stop to burglary is to put a stop to
industry? All the vivisections that have been performed since the world
began have produced nothing so important as the innocent and honorable
discovery of radiography; and one of the reasons why radiography was not
discovered sooner was that the men whose business it was to discover
new clinical methods were coarsening and stupefying themselves with the
sensual villanies and cutthroat's casuistries of vivisection. The law of
the conservation of energy holds good in physiology as in other things:
every vivisector is a deserter from the army of honorable investigators.
But the vivisector does not see this. He not only calls his methods
scientific: he contends that there are no other scientific methods.
When you express your natural loathing for his cruelty and your natural
contempt for his stupidity, he imagines that you are attacking science.
Yet he has no inkling of the method and temper of science. The point at
issue being plainly whether he is a rascal or not, he not only insists
that the real point is whether some hotheaded antivivisectionist is a
liar (which he proves by ridiculously unscientific assumptions as to the
degree of accuracy attainable in human statement), but never dreams of
offering any scientific evidence by his own methods.
There are many paths to knowledge already discovered; and no enlightened
man doubts that there are many more waiting to be discovered. Indeed,
all paths lead to knowledge; because even the vilest and stupidest
action teaches us something about vileness and stupidity, and may
accidentally teach us a good deal more: for instance, a cutthroat learns
(an
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