The Achilles heel of vivisection, however, is not to be found in the
pain it causes, but in the line of argument by which it is justified.
The medical code regarding it is simply criminal anarchism at 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
(and perhaps teaches) the anatomy of the carotid artery and jugular
vein; and there can be no question that the burning of St. Joan of Arc
must have been a most instructive and interesting experiment to a good
observer, and could have been made more so if it had been carried out by
skilled physiologists under laboratory conditions. The earthquake in San
Francisco proved invaluable as an experiment in the stability of giant
steel buildings; and the ramming of the Victoria by the Camperdown
settled doubtful points of the greatest importance in naval warfare.
According to vivisectionist logic our builders would be justified in
producing artificial earthquakes with dynamite, and our admirals in
contriving catastrophes at naval manoeuvres, in order to follow up the
line of research thus accidentally discovered.
The truth is, if the acquisition of knowledge justifies every sort of
conduct, it justifies any sort of conduct, from the illumination
of Nero's feasts by burning human beings alive (another interesting
experiment) to the simplest act of kindness. And in the light of that
truth it is clear that the exemption of the pursuit of knowledge
from the laws of honor is the most hideous conceivable enlargement of
anarchy; worse, by far, than an exemption of the pursuit of money or
political power, since there can hardly be attained without some regard
for at least the appearances of human welfare, whereas a curious devil
might destroy the whole race in torment, acquiring knowledge all the
time from his highly interesting experiment. There is more danger in one
respectable scientist countenancing such a monstrous claim than in fifty
assassins or dynamitards. The man who makes it is ethically imbecile;
and whoever imagines that it is a scientific claim has not the faintest
conception of what science means. The paths to knowledge are countless.
One of these paths is a path through darkness, secrecy, and cruelty.
When a man deliberately turns from all other paths and goes down that
one, it is scientific to infer that what attracts him is not knowledge,
since there are other paths to that, but cruelty. With so strong and
scientific a case against him, it is childish for him to stand on
his honor and reputation and high character and the credit of a noble
profession and so forth: he must clear himself either by reason or by
experiment, unless he boldly contends that evolution has retained
a passion of cruelty in man just because it is indispensable to the
fulness of his knowledge.