Yet, after all, the whole argument, deduced from a comparison of vivisection with sport, rests on the following proposition, which I claim to class as a fallacy :—
11. That the toleration of one form of an evil necessitates the toleration of all others.
Grant this, and you simply paralyze all conceivable efforts at reformation. How can we talk of putting down cruelty to animals when drunkenness is rampant in the land ? You would propose, then, to legislate in the interests of sobriety ? Shame on you ! Look at the unseaworthy ships in which our gallant sailors are risking their lives ! What ! Organize a crusade against dishonest shipowners, while our streets swarm with a population growing up in heathen ignorance ! We can but reply, non omnia possumus omnes. And surely the man who sees his way to diminish in any degree even a single one of the myriad evils around him, may well lay to heart the saying of a wise man of old, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
The last parallel to which the advocates of vivisection may be expected to retreat, supposing all these positions to be found untenable, is the assertion—
12. That legislation would only increase the evil.
The plea, if I understand it aright, amounts to this,—that legislation would probably encourage many to go beyond the limit with which at present they are content, as soon as they found that a legal limit had been fixed beyond their own. Granting this to be the tendency of human nature, what is the remedy usually adopted in other cases ? A stricter limit, or the abandonment of all limits ? Suppose a case—that in a certain town it were proposed to close all taverns at midnight, and that the opponents of the measure urged, “At present some close at eleven—a most desirable hour : if you pass this law, all will keep open till midnight.” What would the answer be ? “Then let us do nothing,” or “Then let us fix eleven, instead of twelve, as our limit” ? Surely this does not need many words : the principle of doing evil that good may come is not likely to find many defenders, even in this modern disguise of forbearing to do good lest evil should come. We may safely take our stand on, the principle of doing the duty which we see before us : secondary consequences are at once out of our control and beyond our calculation.
The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898), English author, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. “Some Popular Fallacies About Vivisection” serialised on The Grumpy Vegan and available in full at the Animal Rights Library.
