August 24, 2025 • 27 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fourteen, doctor Moreau explains, And now prendick, I will explain,
said doctor Moreau. As soon as we had eaten and drunk,
I must confess that you are the most dictatorial guest
I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the
last I shall do to oblige you. The next thing
(00:22):
you threatened to commit suicide about I shan't do, even
at some personal inconvenience. He sat in my deck chair,
a cigar, half consumed in his white, dexterous looking fingers.
The light of the swinging lamp fell on his white hair.
He stared through the little window out at the starlight.
(00:43):
I sat as far away from him as possible. The
table between us and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was
not present. I did not care to be with the
two of them in such a little room. You admit
that the vivisected human being, as you called it is,
after all, only the puma, said Moreau. He made me
(01:06):
visit that horror in the inner room to assure myself
of its inhumanity. It is the puma, I said, still alive,
but so cut and mutilated, as I pray I may
never see living flesh again. Of all vile. Never mind that,
said Moreau. At least spare me your youthful horrors. Montgomery
(01:29):
used to be just the same. You admit that it
is the puma. Now be quiet while I reel off
my physiological lecture to you, and forthwith, beginning in the
tone of a man supremely bored, but presently warming a little,
he explained his work to me. He was very simple
(01:49):
and convincing. Now and then there was a touch of
sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with
shame at our mutual positions. The creatures I had seen
were not men, had never been men. They were animals,
humanized animals, triumphs of vivisection. You forget all that a
(02:12):
skilled vivisector can do with living things, said Moreau. For
my own part, I am puzzled why the things I
have done here have not been done before. Small efforts,
of course, have been made. Amputation, tongue cutting, excisions. Of course,
you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery.
(02:34):
Then in the case of excisions, you of all kinds
of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations
in the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt
you have heard of these things, of course, said I.
But these foul creatures of yours, all in good time,
said he, waving his hand at me. I am only
(02:58):
the beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can
do better things than that. There is building up as
well as breaking down and changing. You have heard, perhaps
of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases where
the nose has been destroyed. A flap of skin is
(03:18):
cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose, and
heels in the new position. This is a kind of grafting,
and a new position of part of an animal upon itself.
Grafting of freshly obtained material from another animal is also possible.
The case of teeth, for example, the grafting of skin
(03:38):
and bone is done to facilitate healing. The surgeon places
in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped
from another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim.
Freshly killed hunter's cock spur, possibly you have heard of
that flourished on the bull's neck. And the rhinoceros rats
of the Algerian zouaves are also to be theoret of
(04:01):
monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from the tail of
an ordinary rat to its snout and allowing it to
heal in that position. Monsters manufactured, said I, then you
mean to tell me, yes, these creatures you have seen
are animals carving and rot into new shapes. To that,
(04:24):
to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my
life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining
a knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified,
and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all
lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but
no one had the temerity to touch it. It is
(04:44):
not simply the outward form of an animal which I
can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature
may also be made to undergo an enduring modification, of
which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or
dead matter are exempt. That will no doubt be familiar
to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood,
(05:07):
with which subject, indeed, I began. These are all familiar cases.
Less so, and probably far more extensive, were the operations
of those medieval practitioners who made dwarfs and beggar cripples.
Show monsters, some vestiges of whose art still remains in
the preliminary manipulation of the young montebank or contortionist. Victor
(05:32):
Hugo gives an account of them in lum Quirie. But
perhaps my meaning grows plain now you begin to see
that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from
one part of an animal to another, or from one
animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods
of growth, to modify the articulations of its limbs, and
(05:57):
indeed to change it in its most intimately structure. And
yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought
as an end and systematically my modern investigators, until I
took it up. Some such things have been hit upon
in the last resort of surgery. Most of the kindred
(06:17):
evidence that will recur to your mind has been demonstrated,
as it were, by accident, by tyrants, by criminals, by
the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained,
clumsy handed men working for their own immediate ends. I
was the first man to take up this question, armed
with antiseptic surgery and with a really scientific knowledge of
(06:41):
the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it must
have been practiced in secret before such creatures as the
Siamese twins, and in the vaults of the Inquisition. No
doubt their chief aim was artistic torture. But some at
least of the inquisitors must have had a touch of
scienceific curiosity. But said I these things these animals talk.
(07:09):
He said, that was so, and proceeded to point out
that the possibility of vivisection does not stop at a
mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental
structure is even less determinate than the bodily. In our
growing science of hypnotism, we find the promise of a
possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting
(07:34):
upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed
of what we call moral education, he said, is such
an artificial modification and perversion of instinct. Pugnacity is trained
into courageous self sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
(07:54):
And the great difference between man and monkey is in
the larynx, he continued, in the capacity to frame delicately
different sound symbols by which thought could be sustained in
this I failed to agree with him, but with a
certain incivility, he declined to notice my objection. He repeated
that the thing was so, and continued his account of
(08:17):
his work. 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 as well have worked to
form sheep into lamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose
(08:38):
there is something in the human form that appeals to
the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal
shape can. But have 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
(09:00):
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
(09:24):
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
(09:45):
long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so
long as your own pain drives you, so long as
pain underlies your propositions about sin, So long I tell
you are an animal, thinking a little obscurely what an
animal feels this pain? I gave an impatient shrug at
(10:06):
such sophistry. Oh but it is such a little thing.
A mind truly open to what science has to teach
must see that it is a little thing. It may
be that save in this little planet, this speck of
cosmic dust, invisible, long before the nearest star could be attained.
It may be I say that nowhere else does this
(10:30):
thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our
way towards. Why, even on this earth, even among living things,
what pain is there? As he spoke, he drew a
little pinknife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade, and
moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then,
(10:54):
choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his
leg and withdrew it. No doubt, he said, you have
seen that before. It does not hurt a pinprick, But
what does it show. The capacity for pain is not
kneaded in the muscle and is not placed. There is
(11:14):
but little kneeded in the skin, and only here and
there over the thigh is a spot capable of feeling pain.
Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us
and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful, nor
is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There's no
(11:34):
taint of pain, real pain in the sensations of the
optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely
see flashes of light, just as disease of the auditory
nerve merely means a humming in our ears. Plants do
not feel pain, nor the lower animals. It's possible that
such animals as the starfish and crayfish do not feel
(11:56):
pain at all. Then with men, the more in intelligent
they become, the more intelligently they will see after their
own welfare, and the less they will need to go
to keep them out of danger. I never heard of
a useless thing that was not ground out of existence
by evolution. Sooner or later, did you and pain gets needless.
(12:22):
Then I am a religious man, predict, as every sane
man must be. It may be I fancy that I
have seen more of the ways of this world's maker
than you, For I have sought his laws in my
way all my life, while you, I understand, have been
collecting butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have
(12:44):
nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and pain, Bah,
what is your theologian's ecstasy but Mahomet's owery in the dark,
This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, predict,
is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark
of the beast from which they came. Pain, pain and
(13:06):
pleasure They are for us only so long as we
wriggle in the dust. You see, I went on with
this research just the way it led me. That is
the only way I ever heard of true research going.
I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer,
and got a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible?
(13:31):
You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what
an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange,
colorless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you
is no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a
problem sympathetic pain. All I know of it I remember
(13:53):
as a thing I used to suffer from years ago.
I wanted it was the one thing I wanted to
find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape.
But said I, the thing is in a pomination. To
this day, I have never troubled about the ethics of
(14:14):
the matter, he continued. The study of nature makes a
man at last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on,
not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing, and
the material has tripped into the huts yonder. It is
nearly eleven years since we came here. I in Montgomery
(14:34):
and six cannakers. I remember the green stillness of the
island and the empty ocean about us, as though it
was yesterday. The place seemed waiting for me. The stores
were landed in, the house was built. The cannarkers found
some huts near the ravine. I went to work here
upon what I had brought with me. There were some
(14:56):
disagreeable things happened. At first. I began with the sheep
and killed it. After a day and a half by
a slip of the scalpel. I took another sheep and
made a thing of pain and fear, and left it
bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me
when I had finished it, but when I went to
it I was discontented with it. It remembered me and
(15:19):
was terrified beyond imagination, and it had no more than
the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it,
the clumsier it seemed, until at last I put the
monster out of its misery. These animals without courage, these
fear haunted, pain driven things, without a spark of pugnacious
energy to face torment, they are no good for man making.
(15:44):
Then I took a gorilla I had, and upon that,
working with infinite care and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I
made my first man. All the week, night and day
I molded him. With him, it was chief the brain
that needed molting, much had to be added, much changed.
(16:05):
I thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type
when I had finished him, and he lay bandaged, bound
and motionless before me. It was only when his life
was assured that I left him and came into his
room again, and found Montgomery much as you are. He
had heard some of the cries as the thing grew,
(16:25):
human cries like those that disturbed you. So I didn't
take him completely into my confidence at first, and the
Cannachers too had realized something of it. They were scared
out of the wits by the sight of me. I
got Montgomery over to me in a way, but I
(16:45):
and he had the hardest job to prevent the Kannakers deserting.
Finally they did, and so we lost the yacht. I
spent many days educating the brute. Altogether, I had him
for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments
of English, gave him ideas of counting, even made the
thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow,
(17:09):
though I've met with idiots slower. He began with a
clean sheet mentally, had no memories left in his mind
of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed,
and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff,
and able to converse a little, I took him yonder
and introduced him to the Canachers as an interesting stowaway.
(17:32):
They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow, which
offended me rather for I was conceited about him. But
his ways seemed so mild, and he was so abject,
that after a time they received him and took his
education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative
and adaptive, and built himself a hovel, rather better, it
(17:54):
seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one
among the boys, a bit of a missionary, and he
taught the thing to read, or at least to pick
out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality.
But it seems the beast's habits were not all that
is desirable. I rested from work for some days after this,
(18:17):
and it was in a mind to write an account
of the whole affair, to wake up English physiology. Then
I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree
and gibbering at two of the kanakas who had been
teasing him. I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of
such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came home,
(18:38):
resolved to do better. Before I took my work back
to England. I have been doing better, but somehow the
things drift back again. The stubborn beast flesh grows day
by day back again. But I mean to do better
things still. I mean to conquer that this puma. But
(19:04):
that's the story. All the Kannaker boys are dead now.
One fell overboard of the launch, and one died of
a wounded heel that he poisoned in some way with
plant juice. Three went away in the yacht, and I
suppose and Hope were drowned. The other one was killed. Well,
(19:25):
I have replaced them, Montgomery went on, as much as
you are disposed to do at first. And then what
became of the other one, said I sharply, the other
Kannaker who was killed. The fact is, after I had
made a number of human creatures, I made a thing.
(19:46):
He hesitated, Yes, said I it was killed. I don't understand,
said I. Do you mean to say it killed the Kannaker. Yes,
it killed several other things that it caught. We chased
it for a couple of days. It got loose by accident.
(20:07):
I never meant it to get away. It was unfinished.
It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing
with a horrible face that writhed along the ground in
a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain.
It lurked in the woods for some days until we
(20:27):
hunted it, and then it wriggled into the northern part
of the island, and we divided the party to close
in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The
man had a rifle, and when his body was found,
one of the beryls was curved into the shape of
an ass and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing.
(20:50):
After that I stuck to the ideal of humanity, except
for little things. He became silent. I sat in silence
watching his face. So for twenty years altogether, counting nine
years in England, I have been going on. And there
(21:11):
is still something in everything I do that defeats me,
makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I
rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it, but
always I fall short of the things I dream. The
human shape I can get now almost with ease, so
(21:33):
that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong.
But often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,
painful things that I dare not shape too freely. But
it is in the subtle grafting and reshaping one must
needs do to the brain that my trouble lies. The
(21:54):
intelligence is often oddly low, with unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps,
and least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot touch.
Somewhere I cannot determine where in the seat of the emotions, cravings, instincts,
(22:15):
desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst
forth suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature
with anger, hate, or fear. These creatures of mine seemed
strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began
to observe them. But to me, just after I make them,
(22:39):
they seemed to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as
I observed them that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait,
then another creeps to the surface and stares out at me.
But I will conquer. Yet, each time I dip a
living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say,
(23:03):
this time I will burn out all the animal. This
time I will make a rational creature of my own.
After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
hundred thousand in the making, he thought darkly. But I
am drawing near the fastness this puma of mine. After
(23:24):
a silence, and they revert. As soon as my hand
is taken from them. The beast begins to creep back,
begins to assert itself again. Another long silence. Then you
take the things you make into those dens, said I.
(23:45):
They go. I turn them out when I begin to
feel the beast in them, And presently they wander there.
They all dread this house and me. There is a
kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one
or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it,
(24:08):
but I believe he half likes some of those beasts.
It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with
a sense of failure. I take no interest in them.
I fancy they follow in the lines that cannot Commissionary
marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a
rational life. Poor beasts. There's something they call the law,
(24:32):
seeing hymns about all thine. They build themselves their dins,
gather fruit and pull herbs, marry even. But I can
see through it all, see into their very souls, and
see they are nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts
that perish, anger, and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.
(24:56):
Yet there odd complex, like everything else alive, there is
a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part
waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me.
I have some hope of this puma. I have worked
hard at her head and brain, and now, said he,
(25:23):
standing up, after a long gap of silence, during which
we had each pursued our own thoughts. What do you think?
Are you in fear of me? Still? I looked at
him and saw but a white faced, white haired man
with calm eyes. Save for his serenity, the touch almost
(25:43):
of beauty that resulted from his set tranquility, and his
magnificent build, he might have passed Muster among a hundred
other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered. By way of
answer to his second question, jun I handed him a
revolver with either hand. Keep them, he said, and snatched
(26:07):
a yawn. He stood up, stared at me for a moment,
and smiled. You've had two eventful days, said he. I
should advise some sleep. I'm glad it's all clear. Good night.
He thought me over for a moment that went out
(26:28):
by the inner door. I immediately turned the key in
the outer one. I sat down again, sat for a
time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary emotionally, mentally,
and physically that I could not think beyond the point
at which he had left me. The black window stared
(26:49):
at me like an eye. At last, with an effort,
I put out the light and got into the hammock.
Very soon I was asleep,
Fourteen, doctor Moreau explains, And now prendick, I will explain,
said doctor Moreau. As soon as we had eaten and drunk,
I must confess that you are the most dictatorial guest
I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the
last I shall do to oblige you. The next thing
(00:22):
you threatened to commit suicide about I shan't do, even
at some personal inconvenience. He sat in my deck chair,
a cigar, half consumed in his white, dexterous looking fingers.
The light of the swinging lamp fell on his white hair.
He stared through the little window out at the starlight.
(00:43):
I sat as far away from him as possible. The
table between us and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was
not present. I did not care to be with the
two of them in such a little room. You admit
that the vivisected human being, as you called it is,
after all, only the puma, said Moreau. He made me
(01:06):
visit that horror in the inner room to assure myself
of its inhumanity. It is the puma, I said, still alive,
but so cut and mutilated, as I pray I may
never see living flesh again. Of all vile. Never mind that,
said Moreau. At least spare me your youthful horrors. Montgomery
(01:29):
used to be just the same. You admit that it
is the puma. Now be quiet while I reel off
my physiological lecture to you, and forthwith, beginning in the
tone of a man supremely bored, but presently warming a little,
he explained his work to me. He was very simple
(01:49):
and convincing. Now and then there was a touch of
sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with
shame at our mutual positions. The creatures I had seen
were not men, had never been men. They were animals,
humanized animals, triumphs of vivisection. You forget all that a
(02:12):
skilled vivisector can do with living things, said Moreau. For
my own part, I am puzzled why the things I
have done here have not been done before. Small efforts,
of course, have been made. Amputation, tongue cutting, excisions. Of course,
you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery.
(02:34):
Then in the case of excisions, you of all kinds
of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations
in the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt
you have heard of these things, of course, said I.
But these foul creatures of yours, all in good time,
said he, waving his hand at me. I am only
(02:58):
the beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can
do better things than that. There is building up as
well as breaking down and changing. You have heard, perhaps
of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases where
the nose has been destroyed. A flap of skin is
(03:18):
cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose, and
heels in the new position. This is a kind of grafting,
and a new position of part of an animal upon itself.
Grafting of freshly obtained material from another animal is also possible.
The case of teeth, for example, the grafting of skin
(03:38):
and bone is done to facilitate healing. The surgeon places
in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped
from another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim.
Freshly killed hunter's cock spur, possibly you have heard of
that flourished on the bull's neck. And the rhinoceros rats
of the Algerian zouaves are also to be theoret of
(04:01):
monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from the tail of
an ordinary rat to its snout and allowing it to
heal in that position. Monsters manufactured, said I, then you
mean to tell me, yes, these creatures you have seen
are animals carving and rot into new shapes. To that,
(04:24):
to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my
life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining
a knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified,
and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all
lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but
no one had the temerity to touch it. It is
(04:44):
not simply the outward form of an animal which I
can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature
may also be made to undergo an enduring modification, of
which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or
dead matter are exempt. That will no doubt be familiar
to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood,
(05:07):
with which subject, indeed, I began. These are all familiar cases.
Less so, and probably far more extensive, were the operations
of those medieval practitioners who made dwarfs and beggar cripples.
Show monsters, some vestiges of whose art still remains in
the preliminary manipulation of the young montebank or contortionist. Victor
(05:32):
Hugo gives an account of them in lum Quirie. But
perhaps my meaning grows plain now you begin to see
that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from
one part of an animal to another, or from one
animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods
of growth, to modify the articulations of its limbs, and
(05:57):
indeed to change it in its most intimately structure. And
yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought
as an end and systematically my modern investigators, until I
took it up. Some such things have been hit upon
in the last resort of surgery. Most of the kindred
(06:17):
evidence that will recur to your mind has been demonstrated,
as it were, by accident, by tyrants, by criminals, by
the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained,
clumsy handed men working for their own immediate ends. I
was the first man to take up this question, armed
with antiseptic surgery and with a really scientific knowledge of
(06:41):
the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it must
have been practiced in secret before such creatures as the
Siamese twins, and in the vaults of the Inquisition. No
doubt their chief aim was artistic torture. But some at
least of the inquisitors must have had a touch of
scienceific curiosity. But said I these things these animals talk.
(07:09):
He said, that was so, and proceeded to point out
that the possibility of vivisection does not stop at a
mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental
structure is even less determinate than the bodily. In our
growing science of hypnotism, we find the promise of a
possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting
(07:34):
upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed
of what we call moral education, he said, is such
an artificial modification and perversion of instinct. Pugnacity is trained
into courageous self sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
(07:54):
And the great difference between man and monkey is in
the larynx, he continued, in the capacity to frame delicately
different sound symbols by which thought could be sustained in
this I failed to agree with him, but with a
certain incivility, he declined to notice my objection. He repeated
that the thing was so, and continued his account of
(08:17):
his work. 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 as well have worked to
form sheep into lamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose
(08:38):
there is something in the human form that appeals to
the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal
shape can. But have 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
(09:00):
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
(09:24):
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
(09:45):
long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so
long as your own pain drives you, so long as
pain underlies your propositions about sin, So long I tell
you are an animal, thinking a little obscurely what an
animal feels this pain? I gave an impatient shrug at
(10:06):
such sophistry. Oh but it is such a little thing.
A mind truly open to what science has to teach
must see that it is a little thing. It may
be that save in this little planet, this speck of
cosmic dust, invisible, long before the nearest star could be attained.
It may be I say that nowhere else does this
(10:30):
thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our
way towards. Why, even on this earth, even among living things,
what pain is there? As he spoke, he drew a
little pinknife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade, and
moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then,
(10:54):
choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his
leg and withdrew it. No doubt, he said, you have
seen that before. It does not hurt a pinprick, But
what does it show. The capacity for pain is not
kneaded in the muscle and is not placed. There is
(11:14):
but little kneeded in the skin, and only here and
there over the thigh is a spot capable of feeling pain.
Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us
and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful, nor
is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There's no
(11:34):
taint of pain, real pain in the sensations of the
optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely
see flashes of light, just as disease of the auditory
nerve merely means a humming in our ears. Plants do
not feel pain, nor the lower animals. It's possible that
such animals as the starfish and crayfish do not feel
(11:56):
pain at all. Then with men, the more in intelligent
they become, the more intelligently they will see after their
own welfare, and the less they will need to go
to keep them out of danger. I never heard of
a useless thing that was not ground out of existence
by evolution. Sooner or later, did you and pain gets needless.
(12:22):
Then I am a religious man, predict, as every sane
man must be. It may be I fancy that I
have seen more of the ways of this world's maker
than you, For I have sought his laws in my
way all my life, while you, I understand, have been
collecting butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have
(12:44):
nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and pain, Bah,
what is your theologian's ecstasy but Mahomet's owery in the dark,
This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, predict,
is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark
of the beast from which they came. Pain, pain and
(13:06):
pleasure They are for us only so long as we
wriggle in the dust. You see, I went on with
this research just the way it led me. That is
the only way I ever heard of true research going.
I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer,
and got a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible?
(13:31):
You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what
an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange,
colorless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you
is no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a
problem sympathetic pain. All I know of it I remember
(13:53):
as a thing I used to suffer from years ago.
I wanted it was the one thing I wanted to
find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape.
But said I, the thing is in a pomination. To
this day, I have never troubled about the ethics of
(14:14):
the matter, he continued. The study of nature makes a
man at last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on,
not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing, and
the material has tripped into the huts yonder. It is
nearly eleven years since we came here. I in Montgomery
(14:34):
and six cannakers. I remember the green stillness of the
island and the empty ocean about us, as though it
was yesterday. The place seemed waiting for me. The stores
were landed in, the house was built. The cannarkers found
some huts near the ravine. I went to work here
upon what I had brought with me. There were some
(14:56):
disagreeable things happened. At first. I began with the sheep
and killed it. After a day and a half by
a slip of the scalpel. I took another sheep and
made a thing of pain and fear, and left it
bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me
when I had finished it, but when I went to
it I was discontented with it. It remembered me and
(15:19):
was terrified beyond imagination, and it had no more than
the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it,
the clumsier it seemed, until at last I put the
monster out of its misery. These animals without courage, these
fear haunted, pain driven things, without a spark of pugnacious
energy to face torment, they are no good for man making.
(15:44):
Then I took a gorilla I had, and upon that,
working with infinite care and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I
made my first man. All the week, night and day
I molded him. With him, it was chief the brain
that needed molting, much had to be added, much changed.
(16:05):
I thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type
when I had finished him, and he lay bandaged, bound
and motionless before me. It was only when his life
was assured that I left him and came into his
room again, and found Montgomery much as you are. He
had heard some of the cries as the thing grew,
(16:25):
human cries like those that disturbed you. So I didn't
take him completely into my confidence at first, and the
Cannachers too had realized something of it. They were scared
out of the wits by the sight of me. I
got Montgomery over to me in a way, but I
(16:45):
and he had the hardest job to prevent the Kannakers deserting.
Finally they did, and so we lost the yacht. I
spent many days educating the brute. Altogether, I had him
for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments
of English, gave him ideas of counting, even made the
thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow,
(17:09):
though I've met with idiots slower. He began with a
clean sheet mentally, had no memories left in his mind
of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed,
and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff,
and able to converse a little, I took him yonder
and introduced him to the Canachers as an interesting stowaway.
(17:32):
They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow, which
offended me rather for I was conceited about him. But
his ways seemed so mild, and he was so abject,
that after a time they received him and took his
education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative
and adaptive, and built himself a hovel, rather better, it
(17:54):
seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one
among the boys, a bit of a missionary, and he
taught the thing to read, or at least to pick
out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality.
But it seems the beast's habits were not all that
is desirable. I rested from work for some days after this,
(18:17):
and it was in a mind to write an account
of the whole affair, to wake up English physiology. Then
I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree
and gibbering at two of the kanakas who had been
teasing him. I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of
such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came home,
(18:38):
resolved to do better. Before I took my work back
to England. I have been doing better, but somehow the
things drift back again. The stubborn beast flesh grows day
by day back again. But I mean to do better
things still. I mean to conquer that this puma. But
(19:04):
that's the story. All the Kannaker boys are dead now.
One fell overboard of the launch, and one died of
a wounded heel that he poisoned in some way with
plant juice. Three went away in the yacht, and I
suppose and Hope were drowned. The other one was killed. Well,
(19:25):
I have replaced them, Montgomery went on, as much as
you are disposed to do at first. And then what
became of the other one, said I sharply, the other
Kannaker who was killed. The fact is, after I had
made a number of human creatures, I made a thing.
(19:46):
He hesitated, Yes, said I it was killed. I don't understand,
said I. Do you mean to say it killed the Kannaker. Yes,
it killed several other things that it caught. We chased
it for a couple of days. It got loose by accident.
(20:07):
I never meant it to get away. It was unfinished.
It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing
with a horrible face that writhed along the ground in
a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain.
It lurked in the woods for some days until we
(20:27):
hunted it, and then it wriggled into the northern part
of the island, and we divided the party to close
in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The
man had a rifle, and when his body was found,
one of the beryls was curved into the shape of
an ass and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing.
(20:50):
After that I stuck to the ideal of humanity, except
for little things. He became silent. I sat in silence
watching his face. So for twenty years altogether, counting nine
years in England, I have been going on. And there
(21:11):
is still something in everything I do that defeats me,
makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I
rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it, but
always I fall short of the things I dream. The
human shape I can get now almost with ease, so
(21:33):
that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong.
But often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,
painful things that I dare not shape too freely. But
it is in the subtle grafting and reshaping one must
needs do to the brain that my trouble lies. The
(21:54):
intelligence is often oddly low, with unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps,
and least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot touch.
Somewhere I cannot determine where in the seat of the emotions, cravings, instincts,
(22:15):
desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst
forth suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature
with anger, hate, or fear. These creatures of mine seemed
strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began
to observe them. But to me, just after I make them,
(22:39):
they seemed to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as
I observed them that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait,
then another creeps to the surface and stares out at me.
But I will conquer. Yet, each time I dip a
living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say,
(23:03):
this time I will burn out all the animal. This
time I will make a rational creature of my own.
After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
hundred thousand in the making, he thought darkly. But I
am drawing near the fastness this puma of mine. After
(23:24):
a silence, and they revert. As soon as my hand
is taken from them. The beast begins to creep back,
begins to assert itself again. Another long silence. Then you
take the things you make into those dens, said I.
(23:45):
They go. I turn them out when I begin to
feel the beast in them, And presently they wander there.
They all dread this house and me. There is a
kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one
or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it,
(24:08):
but I believe he half likes some of those beasts.
It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with
a sense of failure. I take no interest in them.
I fancy they follow in the lines that cannot Commissionary
marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a
rational life. Poor beasts. There's something they call the law,
(24:32):
seeing hymns about all thine. They build themselves their dins,
gather fruit and pull herbs, marry even. But I can
see through it all, see into their very souls, and
see they are nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts
that perish, anger, and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.
(24:56):
Yet there odd complex, like everything else alive, there is
a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part
waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me.
I have some hope of this puma. I have worked
hard at her head and brain, and now, said he,
(25:23):
standing up, after a long gap of silence, during which
we had each pursued our own thoughts. What do you think?
Are you in fear of me? Still? I looked at
him and saw but a white faced, white haired man
with calm eyes. Save for his serenity, the touch almost
(25:43):
of beauty that resulted from his set tranquility, and his
magnificent build, he might have passed Muster among a hundred
other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered. By way of
answer to his second question, jun I handed him a
revolver with either hand. Keep them, he said, and snatched
(26:07):
a yawn. He stood up, stared at me for a moment,
and smiled. You've had two eventful days, said he. I
should advise some sleep. I'm glad it's all clear. Good night.
He thought me over for a moment that went out
(26:28):
by the inner door. I immediately turned the key in
the outer one. I sat down again, sat for a
time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary emotionally, mentally,
and physically that I could not think beyond the point
at which he had left me. The black window stared
(26:49):
at me like an eye. At last, with an effort,
I put out the light and got into the hammock.
Very soon I was asleep,
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