Take the hackneyed case of the Italian who tortured mice, ostensibly to
find out about the effects of pain rather less than the nearest dentist
could have told him, and who boasted of the ecstatic sensations (he
actually used the word love) with which he carried out his experiments.
Or the gentleman who starved sixty dogs to death to establish the fact
that a dog deprived of food gets progressively lighter and weaker,
becoming remarkably emaciated, and finally dying: an undoubted truth,
but ascertainable without laboratory experiments by a simple enquiry
addressed to the nearest policeman, or, failing him, to any sane
person in Europe. The Italian is diagnosed as a cruel voluptuary: the
dog-starver is passed over as such a hopeless fool that it is impossible
to take any interest in him. Why not test the diagnosis scientifically?
Why not perform a careful series of experiments on persons under the
influence of voluptuous ecstasy, so as to ascertain its physiological
symptoms? Then perform a second series on persons engaged in
mathematical work or machine designing, so as to ascertain the symptoms
of cold scientific activity? Then note the symptoms of a vivisector
performing a cruel experiment; and compare them with the voluptuary
symptoms and the mathematical symptoms? Such experiments would be quite
as interesting and important as any yet undertaken by the vivisectors.
They might open a line of investigation which would finally make, for
instance, the ascertainment of the guilt or innocence of an accused
person a much exacter process than the very fallible methods of our
criminal courts. But instead of proposing such an investigation, our
vivisectors offer us all the pious protestations and all the huffy
recriminations that any common unscientific mortal offers when he is
accused of unworthy conduct.