Those who love certain animals selfishly, pampering them, as so many mothers do their children with worse results, that they may be loved of them in return, betray them to their enemies.  They are not lovers of animals, but only of favourites, and do their part to make the rest of the world dislike animals.  Theirs are the dogs that inhospitably growl and bark and snap, moving the indifferent to dislike, and confirming the unfriendly in their antagonism.  Any dog-parliament, met in the interests of their kind, would condemn such dogs to be discreetly bitten, and their mistresses to be avoided.  And certainly, if animals are intended to live and grow, she is the enemy of any individual animal, who stunts his moral and intellectual development by unwise indulgence.  Of whatever nature be the heaven of the animals, that animal is not in the fair way to enter it.  The education of the lower lies at the door of the higher, and in true education is truest kindness.

But what shall I say of such as for any kind of end subject animals to torture?  I dare hardly trust myself to the expression of my judgment of their conduct in this regard.

’We are investigators; we are not doing it for our own sakes, but for the sake of others, our fellow-men.’

The higher your motive for it, the greater is the blame of your unrighteousness.  Must we congratulate you on such a love for your fellows as inspires you to wrong the weaker than they, those that are without helper against you?  Shall we count the man worthy who, for the sake of his friend, robbed another man too feeble to protect himself, and too poor to punish his assailant?  For the sake of your children, would you waylay a beggar?  No real good can grow in the soil of injustice.

I cannot help suspecting, however, that the desire to know has a greater share in the enormity than the desire to help.  Alas for the science that will sacrifice the law of righteousness but to behold a law of sequence!  The tree of knowledge will never prove to man the tree of life.  There is no law says, Thou shalt know; a thousand laws cry out, Thou shalt do right.  These men are a law unto themselves—­and what a law!  It is the old story:  the greed of knowing casts out righteousness, and mercy, and faith.  Whatever believed a benefit may or may not thus be wrought for higher creatures, the injustice to the lower is nowise affected.  Justice has no respect of persons, but they are surely the weaker that stand more in need of justice!

Labour is a law of the universe, and is not an evil.  Death is a law of this world at least, and is not an evil.  Torture is the law of no world but the hell of human invention.  Labour and death are for the best good of those that labour and die; they are laws of life.  Torture is doubtless over-ruled for the good of the tortured, but it will one day burn a very hell in the hearts of the torturers.