payment page
“The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”
In this quote from Chapter VIII, Prendick explains the overwhelming sympathy he feels upon hearing the excruciating cries of the puma, which he cannot ignore despite his best efforts. Although he is a man of science like Moreau, and by no means opposed to experimentation on animals, Prendick cannot rationalize the puma’s pain as Moreau does. Interestingly, Prendick reflects that he might have been able to tolerate the idea of the puma’s vivisection if not for the cries that bear witness to its suffering. He draws a universal lesson from this admission, namely that humans can often endure great evils so long as they are not forced to think about them.
