“Furs are frightfully becoming; like lace and violets.”
“Then you exonerate them although you’re against the slaying evidently, as well as the use of beasts for experiment.”
“They don’t think.”
“My word that’s true; but all the thinking in creation won’t keep an Eskimo warm without furs.”
“There’s no need for anyone to live up there. The Hudson’s Bay Commissioners are tradespeople.”
“That’s a big proposition.”
“Well?”
“You’d advocate everyone living in temperate climes to spare the beasts?”
“There’s no reason except trade for anyone to live in snow.”
“There’s a mighty except.”
“Well?”
“What about phthisical subjects who need dry cold climes?”
“Wool and astrakhan.”
“Well I guess furs’ll be worn for a bit yet.”
“That doesn’t affect the question.”
“I gather you reckon the beasts oughtn’t help advance science.”
“They don’t. Doctors are as ill as anybody.”
“True enough. You consider that invalidates medical science?”
“Of course they are overworked and many of them splendid. But illness doesn’t decrease. If one disease goes down another goes up.”
“Great Caesar, where did you come across that?”
“Even so; but suppose they all went up?”
“Besides, you talk about animals advancing science. Even if there wasn’t that great French physiologist or chemist or something who looked at the result of experiments on animals and said hélàs, nous avons les mains vides. He declared that there’s nothing to be learned about human bodies from animals and even if there were the thing is that the animals have no choice. We’ve no right to force them to suffer.”
“An animal’s constituted differently to a man. You can’t compare them in the matter of sensitiveness to pain.”
“I knew you’d say that. If people really want to advance science by experiments on bodies they should offer their own bodies.”
“Someone’s been working on your mind if you believe animals suffer more than men.”
“I’d rather see a woman suffer than a man and a man rather than a child and a child rather than an animal. Animals are bewildered and don’t understand. They have nothing to help them. They don’t understand their sufferings.”
“You rate men lower than women in power to endure pain.”
“They get more practice.”
“You’re right there.”
“They’re less sensitive.”
“That’s debateable, Wayneflete.”
“Women appear to be callous over the sufferings of other women and to make a fuss over men. It’s because sick men are more helpless and pitiful. Women appear to be. But the sun appears to go round the earth.”
“I doubt if ever there’ll come a time when we’ll have live humanity in our experimental laboratories.”
“Science has got to go ahead anyway.”
“But if it goes ahead by forcing; sensitive creatures; with … sensitive nervous systems, to bear fear and pain … we shall lose more morally than we shall gain scientifically even if we gain scientifically and we don’t because nearly everyone is ill.”
“You consider knahludg can be bought at too high a price.”
“Well; look at the continental luminaries; where there are no restrictions; they don’t even care about their patients, only diseases interest them, and in general, not only in science, they don’t really know anything, the Germans and the French, you have only to look at them. They are brutal.”
“That’s a large statement. If you’ll pardon me I should say there’s a certain amount of insular prejudice in that.”
“I have not a scrap of insular prejudice. I like foreigners. They are more intelligent than Englishmen. But there’s something they don’t know that makes them all alike. I once heard a wealthy old Jew say that he’d go to Germany for diagnosis and to England for treatment, and he’d had operations and illnesses all over the world. That expresses it.”
“You infer that the English have more humanity.”
“They don’t regard the patient as a case in the way continentals do.”
“Well I guess when we’re sick we all like to go home.”
“You mean the Jew had no home. But he chose the English to go home to when he was ill.”
“That’s true in more senses than one. This country’s been a home for the Jews right away back.”
“It’s a great country. That’s sure.”
“Science has got to go away ahead. If you’re going to be humanitarians over here you must leave continental science out of your scheme. So long as you carry out their results you can’t honestly cry down their methods.”
“You must cry down their methods if you don’t approve of them.”
“You can’t put back. You can’t prevent association between the different lands; especially in matters of science.”
“What I’m saying. You’ve got to accept the goods, even supposing your particular constitution of mind inclines you to bulleave them ill-gotten.”
“It’s a case of good coming out of evil.”
“That’s Jesuitical, the end justifying the means. I don’t believe that. Why should science go ahead so fast? Where’s the hurry as you say in Canada?”
“Well, you’ve only to look around to see that.”
“I don’t see it. Do you mean that people who make scientific experiments do it because they want to improve the world. They don’t. It’s their curiosity.”
“Divine curiosity I’ve heard it called.”
“The divine curiosity of Eve … that’s the answer to the Mosaic fable about woman. She was interested in the serpent, and polite to him and gossiped with him. Science is scandal-mongering; gossip about the universe. Men talk about women gossiping. My word.”
“Stars. I’d like some of our chaps to hear you say that.”
“It is. Darwin gossiped about monkeys and in his old age he looked exactly like one and regretted that he had neglected music.”
“You can’t have it both ways. Each man must pursue one line or another.”
“Poor dears yes.”
“You’re inclined to pity us all.”
“That’s English humanitarianism may be.”
“I’m not a humanitarian. I can’t bear humanity, in the mass. I think it’s a frightful idea.”
“A fairly solid idea.”
“I prefer … the equator, and the moon, and the plane of the ecliptic; I think the plane of the ecliptic is a perfectly lovely thing.”
“It’s a scientific discovery.”
“Yes but not on the body of an animal.”
“The body of the chap who began all that had some pretty hard sufferings.”
“Do you know the schoolboy’s definition
