"'How could I endure such sights?' Oh! well, one gets hardened to
anything, you know, and to tell the truth, I was in search of a new
sensation, and I found it. I watched with as much fascination as the
savages--no, more--for it was new to me and old to them. Oh! come,
Lewis, you needn't draw off your chair; and that reproving,
Sunday-school expression is rather refreshing from a man who upholds
vivisection. I tell you candidly that there is nothing on earth
comparable to the fearful, curious combination of pleasure and horror
with which one watches torture one is powerless to stop. It is morbid,
and probably loathsome. No. It is not morbid, after all; it is natural,
and not a diseased state of mind. Have you never seen a sweet little
child, with a face like an angel, pull the wings from a butterfly, or
half kill a pet animal, and laugh joyfully when it writhed about? I
have. The natural man loves bloodshed, and loves to hurt men and
creatures. It is bred in the bone with all of us, only, as far as the
body is concerned, this love is an almost impotent factor in modern
civilization, for we have deified the soul and intellect to such an
extent, that it is them we seek to goad and wound, when the lust of
cruelty oppresses us, since they have grown to be considered the more
important part; and we know, too, that the embittered soul avenges
itself upon its own body, so that we strike the subtler blow.
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