uman, it is not humane, when you look at a dog to
think about what theoretic discoveries you might possibly make if you
were allowed to bore a hole in his head. Both the humanitarians' fancy
about the feelings concealed inside the bloater, and the
vivisectionists' fancy about the knowledge concealed inside the dog, are
unhealthy fancies, because they upset a human sanity that is certain for
the sake of something that is of necessity uncertain. The
vivisectionist, for the sake of doing something that may or may not be
useful, does something that certainly is horrible. The anti-Christmas
humanitarian, in seeking to have a sympathy with a turkey which no man
can have with a turkey, loses the sympathy he has already with the
happiness of millions of the poor.

It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane extremes in reality to meet.
Thus I have always felt that brutal Imperialism and Tolstoian
non-resistance were not only not opposite, but were the same thing. They
are the same contemptible thought that conquest cannot be resisted,
looked at from the two standpoints of the conqueror and the conquered.
Thus again teetotalism and the really degraded gin-selling and
dram-drinking have exactly the same moral philosophy. They are both
based on the idea that fermented liquor is not a drink, but a drug. But
I am specially certain that the extreme of vegetarian humanity is, as I
have said, akin to the extreme of scientific cruelty--they both permit a
dubious speculation to interfere with their ordinary charity. The sound
moral rule in such matters as vivisection always presents itself to me
in this way. There is no ethical necessity more essential and vital than
this: that casuistical exceptions, though admitted, should be admitted
as exceptions. And it follows from this, I think, that, though we may do
a horrid thing in a horrid situation, we must be quite certain that we
actually and already are in that situation. Thus, all sane moralists
admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would
approve of telling a little boy to practise telling lies, in case he
might one day have to tell a justifiable one. Thus, morality has often
justified shooting a robber or a burglar. But it would not justify going
into the village Sunday school and shooting all the little boys who
looked as if they might grow up into burglars. The need may arise; but
the need must have arisen. It seems to me quite clear that if you step
across this