Let me draw your attention to an anomaly, which accounts for most of our callousness towards the sufferings of animals. Nearly every one who witnesses with his own eyes the infliction of needless pain on an animal feels revolted, and even hastens to the creature’s aid; yet these same men and women, or the vast majority of them, merely hearing or reading of such things, pass by on the other side, with the feeling that to pay attention would be either credulous or sentimental. Now, in regard to credulousness, note that it is hardly ever to the interest of any one to draw attention to cruelty—certainly not to fabricate such a charge; very much the contrary. And in regard to sentiment, there seems to be a slight confusion as to the meaning of that word. A man only moved by cruelty seen with his own eyes is no whit less sentimental than the man who takes fire at the mere recital of it; he is only more deficient in understanding, more cautious in judgment, or more sluggish in blood. Just as sentimental, but less sensitive. The longer I live the more I become convinced that people only use that favourite reproach—sentimental—to stigmatize sympathy with sufferings that they themselves have been unwilling or unable to realize. The moment they do realize, they become just as “sentimental,” just as moved by pity and anger—for that is what sentimental means—as those at whom they sneer. Ah! but—says the public—even if there be suffering for animals, the pleasure that their freaks or their fur or their feathers give us is greater than this suffering; we are entitled to weigh the one against the other. Yet few of that same public would dream of saying this if with their own eyes they saw the tortures; for then the pleasure they talk of would have vanished in the memory of those quivering visions. Out of sheer sluggishness of imagination, out of mere laziness of mind, then, is made that rather pitiable plea—our pleasure is greater than their suffering. Yes! Nearly all the suffering we inflict, whether on human beings or on animals, comes from our not thinking. Many people gravely distrust that practice. For all that, I venture to suggest that a little more thought will do no harm to any of us. We pass this way but once, but once tread this world, and live in communion with these furred and feathered things, many of them beautiful, in a thousand ways so like ourselves, often friendly if we would let them be, and yet who, one and all, are so simple and helpless in the face of our force and ingenuity. Shall we, as we vanish, say: “I have lived my life as a true lord of creation, taking toll from the captivities and sufferings of every creature that had not my strength and cunning!” Or shall we pass out with the thought: “I wish I had not given needless pain to any living thing!” V VIVISECTION OF DOGS (Letters to _The Times_, 1913.) (1)