AN ARGUMENT WHICH WOULD DEFEND ANY CRIME

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