It will now, I hope, be clear why the attack on vivisection is not
an attack on the right to knowledge: why, indeed, those who have the
deepest conviction of the sacredness of that right are the leaders of
the attack. No knowledge is finally impossible of human attainment; for
even though it may be beyond our present capacity, the needed capacity
is not unattainable. Consequently no method of investigation is the only
method; and no law forbidding any particular method can cut us off
from the knowledge we hope to gain by it. The only knowledge we lose by
forbidding cruelty is knowledge at first hand of cruelty itself, which
is precisely the knowledge humane people wish to be spared.
But the question remains: Do we all really wish to be spared that
knowledge? Are humane methods really to be preferred to cruel ones? Even
if the experiments come to nothing, may not their cruelty be enjoyed
for its own sake, as a sensational luxury? Let us face these questions
boldly, not shrinking from the fact that cruelty is one of the primitive
pleasures of mankind, and that the detection of its Protean disguises as
law, education, medicine, discipline, sport and so forth, is one of the
most difficult of the unending tasks of the legislator.