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.


THOU ART THE MAN

I shall not be at all surprised if what I have written above has
induced in sympathetic readers a transport of virtuous
indignation at the expense of the medical profession. I shall not
damp so creditable and salutary a sentiment; but I must point out
that the guilt is shared by all of us. It is not in his capacity
of healer and man of science that the doctor vivisects or defends
vivisection, but in his entirely vulgar lay capacity. He is made
of the same clay as the ignorant, shallow, credulous, half-