your mother you must do without knowledge," so the wisest people
say, "If you cannot attain to knowledge without torturing a dog,
you must do without knowledge."


A FALSE ALTERNATIVE

But in practice you cannot persuade any wise man that this
alternative can ever be forced on anyone but a fool, or that a
fool can be trusted to learn anything from any experiment, cruel
or humane. The Chinaman who burnt down his house to roast his pig
was no doubt honestly unable to conceive any less disastrous way
of cooking his dinner; and the roast must have been spoiled after
all (a perfect type of the average vivisectionist experiment);
but this did not prove that the Chinaman was right: it only
proved that the Chinaman was an incapable cook and,
fundamentally, a fool.

Take another celebrated experiment: one in sanitary reform. In
the days of Nero Rome was in the same predicament as London to-
day. If some one would burn down London, and it were rebuilt, as
it would now have to be, subject to the sanitary by-laws and
Building Act provisions enforced by the London County Council, it
would be enormously improved; and the average lifetime of
Londoners would be considerably prolonged. Nero argued in the
same way about Rome. He employed incendiaries to set it on fire;
and he played the harp in scientific raptures whilst it was
burning. I am so far of Nero's way of thinking that I have often
said, when consulted by despairing sanitary reformers, that what
London needs to make her healthy is an earthquake. Why, then, it