It is not uncommon nowadays for the insane extremes in reality to meet.  Thus I have always felt that brutal Imperialism and Tolstoian non-resistance were not only not opposite, but were the same thing.  They are the same contemptible thought that conquest cannot be resisted, looked at from the two standpoints of the conqueror and the conquered.  Thus again teetotalism and the really degraded gin-selling and dram-drinking have exactly the same moral philosophy.  They are both based on the idea that fermented liquor is not a drink, but a drug.  But I am specially certain that the extreme of vegetarian humanity is, as I have said, akin to the extreme of scientific cruelty—­they both permit a dubious speculation to interfere with their ordinary charity.  The sound moral rule in such matters as vivisection always presents itself to me in this way.  There is no ethical necessity more essential and vital than this:  that casuistical exceptions, though admitted, should be admitted as exceptions.  And it follows from this, I think, that, though we may do a horrid thing in a horrid situation, we must be quite certain that we actually and already are in that situation.  Thus, all sane moralists admit that one may sometimes tell a lie; but no sane moralist would approve of telling a little boy to practise telling lies, in case he might one day have to tell a justifiable one.  Thus, morality has often justified shooting a robber or a burglar.  But it would not justify going into the village Sunday school and shooting all the little boys who looked as if they might grow up into burglars.  The need may arise; but the need must have arisen.  It seems to me quite clear that if you step across this limit you step off a precipice.

Now, whether torturing an animal is or is not an immoral thing, it is, at least, a dreadful thing.  It belongs to the order of exceptional and even desperate acts.  Except for some extraordinary reason I would not grievously hurt an animal; with an extraordinary reason I would grievously hurt him.  If (for example) a mad elephant were pursuing me and my family, and I could only shoot him so that he would die in agony, he would have to die in agony.  But the elephant would be there.  I would not do it to a hypothetical elephant.  Now, it always seems to me that this is the weak point in the ordinary vivisectionist argument, “Suppose your wife were dying.”  Vivisection is not done by a man whose wife is dying.  If it were it might be lifted to the level of the moment, as would be lying or stealing bread, or any other ugly action.  But this ugly action is done in cold blood, at leisure, by men who are not sure that it will be of any use to anybody—­men of whom the most that can be said is that they may conceivably make the beginnings of some discovery which may perhaps save the life of some one else’s wife in some remote future.  That is too cold and distant to rob an act of its immediate horror.  That is like training the child to tell lies for the sake of some great dilemma that may never come to him.  You are doing a cruel thing, but not with enough passion to make it a kindly one.