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The Island of Doctor Moreau | H. G. [Herbert George] Wells | |
XIV. DOCTOR MOREAU EXPLAINS. |
Page 3 of 6 |
I asked him why he had taken the human form as a model. There seemed to me then, and there still seems to me now, a strange wickedness for that choice. He confessed that he had chosen that form by chance. "I might just as well have worked to form sheep into llamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose there is something in the human form that appeals to the artistic turn more powerfully than any animal shape can. But I've not confined myself to man-making. Once or twice--" He was silent, for a minute perhaps. "These years! How they have slipped by! And here I have wasted a day saving your life, and am now wasting an hour explaining myself!" "But," said I, "I still do not understand. Where is your justification for inflicting all this pain? The only thing that could excuse vivisection to me would be some application--" "Precisely," said he. "But, you see, I am differently constituted. We are on different platforms. You are a materialist." "I am not a materialist," I began hotly. "In my view--in my view. For it is just this question of pain that parts us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin,--so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels. This pain--" I gave an impatient shrug at such sophistry. |
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The Island of Doctor Moreau H. G. [Herbert George] Wells |
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