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14 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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Speaker 1: Fourteen, doctor Moreau explains, And now prendick, I will explain,
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Speaker 1: said doctor Moreau. As soon as we had eaten and drunk,
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Speaker 1: I must confess that you are the most dictatorial guest
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Speaker 1: I ever entertained. I warn you that this is the
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Speaker 1: last I shall do to oblige you. The next thing
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Speaker 1: you threatened to commit suicide about I shan't do, even
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Speaker 1: at some personal inconvenience. He sat in my deck chair,
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Speaker 1: a cigar, half consumed in his white, dexterous looking fingers.
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Speaker 1: The light of the swinging lamp fell on his white hair.
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Speaker 1: He stared through the little window out at the starlight.
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Speaker 1: I sat as far away from him as possible. The
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Speaker 1: table between us and the revolvers to hand. Montgomery was
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Speaker 1: not present. I did not care to be with the
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Speaker 1: two of them in such a little room. You admit
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Speaker 1: that the vivisected human being, as you called it is,
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Speaker 1: after all, only the puma, said Moreau. He made me
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Speaker 1: visit that horror in the inner room to assure myself
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Speaker 1: of its inhumanity. It is the puma, I said, still alive,
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Speaker 1: but so cut and mutilated, as I pray I may
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Speaker 1: never see living flesh again. Of all vile. Never mind that,
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Speaker 1: said Moreau. At least spare me your youthful horrors. Montgomery
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Speaker 1: used to be just the same. You admit that it
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Speaker 1: is the puma. Now be quiet while I reel off
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Speaker 1: my physiological lecture to you, and forthwith, beginning in the
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Speaker 1: tone of a man supremely bored, but presently warming a little,
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Speaker 1: he explained his work to me. He was very simple
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Speaker 1: and convincing. Now and then there was a touch of
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Speaker 1: sarcasm in his voice. Presently I found myself hot with
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Speaker 1: shame at our mutual positions. The creatures I had seen
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Speaker 1: were not men, had never been men. They were animals,
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Speaker 1: humanized animals, triumphs of vivisection. You forget all that a
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Speaker 1: skilled vivisector can do with living things, said Moreau. For
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Speaker 1: my own part, I am puzzled why the things I
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Speaker 1: have done here have not been done before. Small efforts,
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Speaker 1: of course, have been made. Amputation, tongue cutting, excisions. Of course,
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Speaker 1: you know a squint may be induced or cured by surgery.
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Speaker 1: Then in the case of excisions, you of all kinds
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Speaker 1: of secondary changes, pigmentary disturbances, modifications of the passions, alterations
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Speaker 1: in the secretion of fatty tissue. I have no doubt
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Speaker 1: you have heard of these things, of course, said I.
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Speaker 1: But these foul creatures of yours, all in good time,
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Speaker 1: said he, waving his hand at me. I am only
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Speaker 1: the beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can
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Speaker 1: do better things than that. There is building up as
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Speaker 1: well as breaking down and changing. You have heard, perhaps
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Speaker 1: of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases where
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Speaker 1: the nose has been destroyed. A flap of skin is
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Speaker 1: cut from the forehead, turned down on the nose, and
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Speaker 1: heels in the new position. This is a kind of grafting,
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Speaker 1: and a new position of part of an animal upon itself.
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Speaker 1: Grafting of freshly obtained material from another animal is also possible.
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Speaker 1: The case of teeth, for example, the grafting of skin
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Speaker 1: and bone is done to facilitate healing. The surgeon places
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Speaker 1: in the middle of the wound pieces of skin snipped
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Speaker 1: from another animal, or fragments of bone from a victim.
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Speaker 1: Freshly killed hunter's cock spur, possibly you have heard of
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Speaker 1: that flourished on the bull's neck. And the rhinoceros rats
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Speaker 1: of the Algerian zouaves are also to be theoret of
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Speaker 1: monsters manufactured by transferring a slip from the tail of
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Speaker 1: an ordinary rat to its snout and allowing it to
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Speaker 1: heal in that position. Monsters manufactured, said I, then you
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Speaker 1: mean to tell me, yes, these creatures you have seen
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Speaker 1: are animals carving and rot into new shapes. To that,
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Speaker 1: to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my
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Speaker 1: life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining
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Speaker 1: a knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified,
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Speaker 1: and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all
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Speaker 1: lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but
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Speaker 1: no one had the temerity to touch it. It is
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Speaker 1: not simply the outward form of an animal which I
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Speaker 1: can change. The physiology, the chemical rhythm of the creature
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Speaker 1: may also be made to undergo an enduring modification, of
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Speaker 1: which vaccination and other methods of inoculation with living or
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Speaker 1: dead matter are exempt. That will no doubt be familiar
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Speaker 1: to you. A similar operation is the transfusion of blood,
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Speaker 1: with which subject, indeed, I began. These are all familiar cases.
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Speaker 1: Less so, and probably far more extensive, were the operations
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Speaker 1: of those medieval practitioners who made dwarfs and beggar cripples.
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Speaker 1: Show monsters, some vestiges of whose art still remains in
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Speaker 1: the preliminary manipulation of the young montebank or contortionist. Victor
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Speaker 1: Hugo gives an account of them in lum Quirie. But
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Speaker 1: perhaps my meaning grows plain now you begin to see
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Speaker 1: that it is a possible thing to transplant tissue from
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Speaker 1: one part of an animal to another, or from one
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Speaker 1: animal to another, to alter its chemical reactions and methods
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Speaker 1: of growth, to modify the articulations of its limbs, and
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Speaker 1: indeed to change it in its most intimately structure. And
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Speaker 1: yet this extraordinary branch of knowledge has never been sought
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Speaker 1: as an end and systematically my modern investigators, until I
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Speaker 1: took it up. Some such things have been hit upon
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Speaker 1: in the last resort of surgery. Most of the kindred
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Speaker 1: evidence that will recur to your mind has been demonstrated,
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Speaker 1: as it were, by accident, by tyrants, by criminals, by
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Speaker 1: the breeders of horses and dogs, by all kinds of untrained,
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Speaker 1: clumsy handed men working for their own immediate ends. I
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Speaker 1: was the first man to take up this question, armed
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Speaker 1: with antiseptic surgery and with a really scientific knowledge of
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Speaker 1: the laws of growth. Yet one would imagine it must
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Speaker 1: have been practiced in secret before such creatures as the
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Speaker 1: Siamese twins, and in the vaults of the Inquisition. No
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Speaker 1: doubt their chief aim was artistic torture. But some at
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Speaker 1: least of the inquisitors must have had a touch of
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Speaker 1: scienceific curiosity. But said I these things these animals talk.
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Speaker 1: He said, that was so, and proceeded to point out
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Speaker 1: that the possibility of vivisection does not stop at a
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Speaker 1: mere physical metamorphosis. A pig may be educated. The mental
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Speaker 1: structure is even less determinate than the bodily. In our
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Speaker 1: growing science of hypnotism, we find the promise of a
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Speaker 1: possibility of superseding old inherent instincts by new suggestions, grafting
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Speaker 1: upon or replacing the inherited fixed ideas. Very much indeed
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Speaker 1: of what we call moral education, he said, is such
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Speaker 1: an artificial modification and perversion of instinct. Pugnacity is trained
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Speaker 1: into courageous self sacrifice, and suppressed sexuality into religious emotion.
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Speaker 1: And the great difference between man and monkey is in
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Speaker 1: the larynx, he continued, in the capacity to frame delicately
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Speaker 1: different sound symbols by which thought could be sustained in
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Speaker 1: this I failed to agree with him, but with a
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Speaker 1: certain incivility, he declined to notice my objection. He repeated
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Speaker 1: that the thing was so, and continued his account of
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Speaker 1: his work. I asked him why he had taken the
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Speaker 1: human form as a model. There seemed to me then,
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Speaker 1: and there still seems to me now, a strange wickedness
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Speaker 1: for that choice. He confessed that he had chosen that
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Speaker 1: form by chance. I might as well have worked to
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Speaker 1: form sheep into lamas and llamas into sheep. I suppose
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Speaker 1: there is something in the human form that appeals to
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Speaker 1: the artistic turn of mind more powerfully than any animal
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Speaker 1: shape can. But have not confined myself to man making
8:49
Speaker 1: once or twice? He was silent for a minute. Perhaps
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Speaker 1: these years, how they have slipped by, And here I
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Speaker 1: have wasted a day saving your life, and am now
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Speaker 1: wasting an hour explaining myself. But said I, I still
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Speaker 1: do not understand. Where is your justification for inflicting all
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Speaker 1: this pain. The only thing that could excuse vivisection to
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Speaker 1: me would be some application, precisely, said he. But you
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Speaker 1: see I am differently constituted. We are on different platforms.
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Speaker 1: You are a materialist. I am not a materialist. I
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Speaker 1: began hotly in my view. In my view, for it
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Speaker 1: is just this question of pain that parts us. So
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Speaker 1: long as visible or audible pain turns you sick, so
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Speaker 1: long as your own pain drives you, so long as
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Speaker 1: pain underlies your propositions about sin, So long I tell
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Speaker 1: you are an animal, thinking a little obscurely what an
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Speaker 1: animal feels this pain? I gave an impatient shrug at
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Speaker 1: such sophistry. Oh but it is such a little thing.
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Speaker 1: A mind truly open to what science has to teach
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Speaker 1: must see that it is a little thing. It may
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Speaker 1: be that save in this little planet, this speck of
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Speaker 1: cosmic dust, invisible, long before the nearest star could be attained.
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Speaker 1: It may be I say that nowhere else does this
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Speaker 1: thing called pain occur. But the laws we feel our
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Speaker 1: way towards. Why, even on this earth, even among living things,
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Speaker 1: what pain is there? As he spoke, he drew a
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Speaker 1: little pinknife from his pocket, opened the smaller blade, and
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Speaker 1: moved his chair so that I could see his thigh. Then,
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Speaker 1: choosing the place deliberately, he drove the blade into his
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Speaker 1: leg and withdrew it. No doubt, he said, you have
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Speaker 1: seen that before. It does not hurt a pinprick, But
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Speaker 1: what does it show. The capacity for pain is not
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Speaker 1: kneaded in the muscle and is not placed. There is
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Speaker 1: but little kneeded in the skin, and only here and
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Speaker 1: there over the thigh is a spot capable of feeling pain.
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Speaker 1: Pain is simply our intrinsic medical adviser to warn us
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Speaker 1: and stimulate us. Not all living flesh is painful, nor
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Speaker 1: is all nerve, not even all sensory nerve. There's no
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Speaker 1: taint of pain, real pain in the sensations of the
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Speaker 1: optic nerve. If you wound the optic nerve, you merely
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Speaker 1: see flashes of light, just as disease of the auditory
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Speaker 1: nerve merely means a humming in our ears. Plants do
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Speaker 1: not feel pain, nor the lower animals. It's possible that
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Speaker 1: such animals as the starfish and crayfish do not feel
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Speaker 1: pain at all. Then with men, the more in intelligent
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Speaker 1: they become, the more intelligently they will see after their
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Speaker 1: own welfare, and the less they will need to go
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Speaker 1: to keep them out of danger. I never heard of
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Speaker 1: a useless thing that was not ground out of existence
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Speaker 1: by evolution. Sooner or later, did you and pain gets needless.
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Speaker 1: Then I am a religious man, predict, as every sane
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Speaker 1: man must be. It may be I fancy that I
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Speaker 1: have seen more of the ways of this world's maker
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Speaker 1: than you, For I have sought his laws in my
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Speaker 1: way all my life, while you, I understand, have been
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Speaker 1: collecting butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have
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Speaker 1: nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and pain, Bah,
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Speaker 1: what is your theologian's ecstasy but Mahomet's owery in the dark,
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Speaker 1: This store which men and women set on pleasure and pain, predict,
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Speaker 1: is the mark of the beast upon them, the mark
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Speaker 1: of the beast from which they came. Pain, pain and
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Speaker 1: pleasure They are for us only so long as we
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Speaker 1: wriggle in the dust. You see, I went on with
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Speaker 1: this research just the way it led me. That is
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Speaker 1: the only way I ever heard of true research going.
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Speaker 1: I asked a question, devised some method of obtaining an answer,
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Speaker 1: and got a fresh question. Was this possible or that possible?
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Speaker 1: You cannot imagine what this means to an investigator, what
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Speaker 1: an intellectual passion grows upon him. You cannot imagine the strange,
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Speaker 1: colorless delight of these intellectual desires. The thing before you
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Speaker 1: is no longer an animal, a fellow creature, but a
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Speaker 1: problem sympathetic pain. All I know of it I remember
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Speaker 1: as a thing I used to suffer from years ago.
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Speaker 1: I wanted it was the one thing I wanted to
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Speaker 1: find out the extreme limit of plasticity in a living shape.
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Speaker 1: But said I, the thing is in a pomination. To
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Speaker 1: this day, I have never troubled about the ethics of
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Speaker 1: the matter, he continued. The study of nature makes a
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Speaker 1: man at last as remorseless as nature. I have gone on,
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Speaker 1: not heeding anything but the question I was pursuing, and
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Speaker 1: the material has tripped into the huts yonder. It is
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Speaker 1: nearly eleven years since we came here. I in Montgomery
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Speaker 1: and six cannakers. I remember the green stillness of the
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Speaker 1: island and the empty ocean about us, as though it
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Speaker 1: was yesterday. The place seemed waiting for me. The stores
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Speaker 1: were landed in, the house was built. The cannarkers found
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Speaker 1: some huts near the ravine. I went to work here
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Speaker 1: upon what I had brought with me. There were some
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Speaker 1: disagreeable things happened. At first. I began with the sheep
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Speaker 1: and killed it. After a day and a half by
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Speaker 1: a slip of the scalpel. I took another sheep and
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Speaker 1: made a thing of pain and fear, and left it
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Speaker 1: bound up to heal. It looked quite human to me
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Speaker 1: when I had finished it, but when I went to
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Speaker 1: it I was discontented with it. It remembered me and
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Speaker 1: was terrified beyond imagination, and it had no more than
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Speaker 1: the wits of a sheep. The more I looked at it,
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Speaker 1: the clumsier it seemed, until at last I put the
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Speaker 1: monster out of its misery. These animals without courage, these
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Speaker 1: fear haunted, pain driven things, without a spark of pugnacious
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Speaker 1: energy to face torment, they are no good for man making.
15:44
Speaker 1: Then I took a gorilla I had, and upon that,
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Speaker 1: working with infinite care and mastering difficulty after difficulty, I
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Speaker 1: made my first man. All the week, night and day
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Speaker 1: I molded him. With him, it was chief the brain
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Speaker 1: that needed molting, much had to be added, much changed.
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Speaker 1: I thought him a fair specimen of the negroid type
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Speaker 1: when I had finished him, and he lay bandaged, bound
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Speaker 1: and motionless before me. It was only when his life
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Speaker 1: was assured that I left him and came into his
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Speaker 1: room again, and found Montgomery much as you are. He
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Speaker 1: had heard some of the cries as the thing grew,
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Speaker 1: human cries like those that disturbed you. So I didn't
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Speaker 1: take him completely into my confidence at first, and the
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Speaker 1: Cannachers too had realized something of it. They were scared
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Speaker 1: out of the wits by the sight of me. I
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Speaker 1: got Montgomery over to me in a way, but I
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Speaker 1: and he had the hardest job to prevent the Kannakers deserting.
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Speaker 1: Finally they did, and so we lost the yacht. I
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Speaker 1: spent many days educating the brute. Altogether, I had him
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Speaker 1: for three or four months. I taught him the rudiments
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Speaker 1: of English, gave him ideas of counting, even made the
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Speaker 1: thing read the alphabet. But at that he was slow,
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Speaker 1: though I've met with idiots slower. He began with a
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Speaker 1: clean sheet mentally, had no memories left in his mind
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Speaker 1: of what he had been. When his scars were quite healed,
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Speaker 1: and he was no longer anything but painful and stiff,
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Speaker 1: and able to converse a little, I took him yonder
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Speaker 1: and introduced him to the Canachers as an interesting stowaway.
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Speaker 1: They were horribly afraid of him at first, somehow, which
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Speaker 1: offended me rather for I was conceited about him. But
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Speaker 1: his ways seemed so mild, and he was so abject,
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Speaker 1: that after a time they received him and took his
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Speaker 1: education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative
17:50
Speaker 1: and adaptive, and built himself a hovel, rather better, it
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Speaker 1: seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one
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Speaker 1: among the boys, a bit of a missionary, and he
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Speaker 1: taught the thing to read, or at least to pick
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Speaker 1: out letters, and gave him some rudimentary ideas of morality.
18:08
Speaker 1: But it seems the beast's habits were not all that
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Speaker 1: is desirable. I rested from work for some days after this,
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Speaker 1: and it was in a mind to write an account
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Speaker 1: of the whole affair, to wake up English physiology. Then
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Speaker 1: I came upon the creature squatting up in a tree
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Speaker 1: and gibbering at two of the kanakas who had been
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Speaker 1: teasing him. I threatened him, told him the inhumanity of
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Speaker 1: such a proceeding, aroused his sense of shame, and came home,
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Speaker 1: resolved to do better. Before I took my work back
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Speaker 1: to England. I have been doing better, but somehow the
18:47
Speaker 1: things drift back again. The stubborn beast flesh grows day
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Speaker 1: by day back again. But I mean to do better
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Speaker 1: things still. I mean to conquer that this puma. But
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Speaker 1: that's the story. All the Kannaker boys are dead now.
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Speaker 1: One fell overboard of the launch, and one died of
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Speaker 1: a wounded heel that he poisoned in some way with
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Speaker 1: plant juice. Three went away in the yacht, and I
19:17
Speaker 1: suppose and Hope were drowned. The other one was killed. Well,
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Speaker 1: I have replaced them, Montgomery went on, as much as
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Speaker 1: you are disposed to do at first. And then what
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Speaker 1: became of the other one, said I sharply, the other
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Speaker 1: Kannaker who was killed. The fact is, after I had
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Speaker 1: made a number of human creatures, I made a thing.
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Speaker 1: He hesitated, Yes, said I it was killed. I don't understand,
19:54
Speaker 1: said I. Do you mean to say it killed the Kannaker. Yes,
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Speaker 1: it killed several other things that it caught. We chased
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Speaker 1: it for a couple of days. It got loose by accident.
20:07
Speaker 1: I never meant it to get away. It was unfinished.
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Speaker 1: It was purely an experiment. It was a limbless thing
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Speaker 1: with a horrible face that writhed along the ground in
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Speaker 1: a serpentine fashion. It was immensely strong, and in infuriating pain.
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Speaker 1: It lurked in the woods for some days until we
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Speaker 1: hunted it, and then it wriggled into the northern part
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Speaker 1: of the island, and we divided the party to close
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Speaker 1: in upon it. Montgomery insisted upon coming with me. The
20:38
Speaker 1: man had a rifle, and when his body was found,
20:41
Speaker 1: one of the beryls was curved into the shape of
20:43
Speaker 1: an ass and very nearly bitten through. Montgomery shot the thing.
20:50
Speaker 1: After that I stuck to the ideal of humanity, except
20:54
Speaker 1: for little things. He became silent. I sat in silence
21:01
Speaker 1: watching his face. So for twenty years altogether, counting nine
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Speaker 1: years in England, I have been going on. And there
21:11
Speaker 1: is still something in everything I do that defeats me,
21:15
Speaker 1: makes me dissatisfied, challenges me to further effort. Sometimes I
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Speaker 1: rise above my level, sometimes I fall below it, but
21:25
Speaker 1: always I fall short of the things I dream. The
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Speaker 1: human shape I can get now almost with ease, so
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Speaker 1: that it is lithe and graceful, or thick and strong.
21:38
Speaker 1: But often there is trouble with the hands and the claws,
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Speaker 1: painful things that I dare not shape too freely. But
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Speaker 1: it is in the subtle grafting and reshaping one must
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Speaker 1: needs do to the brain that my trouble lies. The
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Speaker 1: intelligence is often oddly low, with unaccountable blank ends, unexpected gaps,
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Speaker 1: and least satisfactory of all is something that I cannot touch.
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Speaker 1: Somewhere I cannot determine where in the seat of the emotions, cravings, instincts,
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Speaker 1: desires that harm humanity, a strange hidden reservoir to burst
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Speaker 1: forth suddenly and inundate the whole being of the creature
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Speaker 1: with anger, hate, or fear. These creatures of mine seemed
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Speaker 1: strange and uncanny to you so soon as you began
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Speaker 1: to observe them. But to me, just after I make them,
22:39
Speaker 1: they seemed to be indisputably human beings. It's afterwards, as
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Speaker 1: I observed them that the persuasion fades. First one animal trait,
22:51
Speaker 1: then another creeps to the surface and stares out at me.
22:55
Speaker 1: But I will conquer. Yet, each time I dip a
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Speaker 1: living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say,
23:03
Speaker 1: this time I will burn out all the animal. This
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Speaker 1: time I will make a rational creature of my own.
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Speaker 1: After all, what is ten years? Men have been a
23:14
Speaker 1: hundred thousand in the making, he thought darkly. But I
23:19
Speaker 1: am drawing near the fastness this puma of mine. After
23:24
Speaker 1: a silence, and they revert. As soon as my hand
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Speaker 1: is taken from them. The beast begins to creep back,
23:32
Speaker 1: begins to assert itself again. Another long silence. Then you
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Speaker 1: take the things you make into those dens, said I.
23:45
Speaker 1: They go. I turn them out when I begin to
23:48
Speaker 1: feel the beast in them, And presently they wander there.
23:52
Speaker 1: They all dread this house and me. There is a
23:56
Speaker 1: kind of travesty of humanity over there. Montgomery knows about it,
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Speaker 1: for he interferes in their affairs. He has trained one
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Speaker 1: or two of them to our service. He's ashamed of it,
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Speaker 1: but I believe he half likes some of those beasts.
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Speaker 1: It's his business, not mine. They only sicken me with
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Speaker 1: a sense of failure. I take no interest in them.
24:21
Speaker 1: I fancy they follow in the lines that cannot Commissionary
24:24
Speaker 1: marked out, and have a kind of mockery of a
24:27
Speaker 1: rational life. Poor beasts. There's something they call the law,
24:32
Speaker 1: seeing hymns about all thine. They build themselves their dins,
24:38
Speaker 1: gather fruit and pull herbs, marry even. But I can
24:43
Speaker 1: see through it all, see into their very souls, and
24:47
Speaker 1: see they are nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts
24:50
Speaker 1: that perish, anger, and the lusts to live and gratify themselves.
24:56
Speaker 1: Yet there odd complex, like everything else alive, there is
25:02
Speaker 1: a kind of upward striving in them, part vanity, part
25:06
Speaker 1: waste sexual emotion, part waste curiosity. It only mocks me.
25:13
Speaker 1: I have some hope of this puma. I have worked
25:16
Speaker 1: hard at her head and brain, and now, said he,
25:23
Speaker 1: standing up, after a long gap of silence, during which
25:26
Speaker 1: we had each pursued our own thoughts. What do you think?
25:31
Speaker 1: Are you in fear of me? Still? I looked at
25:35
Speaker 1: him and saw but a white faced, white haired man
25:39
Speaker 1: with calm eyes. Save for his serenity, the touch almost
25:43
Speaker 1: of beauty that resulted from his set tranquility, and his
25:47
Speaker 1: magnificent build, he might have passed Muster among a hundred
25:51
Speaker 1: other comfortable old gentlemen. Then I shivered. By way of
25:58
Speaker 1: answer to his second question, jun I handed him a
26:01
Speaker 1: revolver with either hand. Keep them, he said, and snatched
26:07
Speaker 1: a yawn. He stood up, stared at me for a moment,
26:12
Speaker 1: and smiled. You've had two eventful days, said he. I
26:18
Speaker 1: should advise some sleep. I'm glad it's all clear. Good night.
26:24
Speaker 1: He thought me over for a moment that went out
26:28
Speaker 1: by the inner door. I immediately turned the key in
26:32
Speaker 1: the outer one. I sat down again, sat for a
26:36
Speaker 1: time in a kind of stagnant mood, so weary emotionally, mentally,
26:42
Speaker 1: and physically that I could not think beyond the point
26:45
Speaker 1: at which he had left me. The black window stared
26:49
Speaker 1: at me like an eye. At last, with an effort,
26:52
Speaker 1: I put out the light and got into the hammock.
26:56
Speaker 1: Very soon I was asleep,