Vivisection Versus Virtue: The Intersecting Realities of Personhood
The interspecies relations between humans and the others they encounter allows for the deduction of a hierarchical complex. In Descartes’, Meditations on First Philosophy, he describes the body and mind through his personal experiences with their defining characteristics. Descartes uses himself to assert the existence of his knowledge, thus confirming the existence of God as the all-knowing provider of reality. In H.G. Well’s novel, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Dr. Moreau challenges the ideas of personhood through the surgical distortions of animals into underdeveloped human representations. Moreau is challenged by his lack of empathy in the character of Edward Prendick, who experiences both human and beastman cultures while he is on the island. Being human requires the combination of the agencies of the body, mind, and soul in a manner of balancing recognition and critical thinking in relation to the conscious’ values and virtues.
Descartes separates the human condition into three forms, body, mind, and soul, to establish the responsibilities of the human and distinguish them from those of a higher power. In order to differentiate between reality and deception, Descartes recognizes humanity through his existence by stating, “In the first place, then, I considered myself as having a face, hands, arms, and all that systems of members composed on bones and flesh as seen in a corpse which I designated by the name of body. In addition to this I considered that I was nourished, that I walked, that I felt and that I thought, and I referred all these actions to the soul…” (Descartes, 9). All of the observations regarding his form and cognitive processes of the human, result from what he experiences. By referring to himself as “I,” he introduces authority into his argument which continues to apply terms such as “corpse” and “flesh” to the physical characteristics. This creates a fissure between the body and soul, because the soul requires an additional level of complexity that builds upon the tools that the physicality of the body provides. The perceptions of Descartes environment are based upon his interpretation of himself and how his being relates to God.
Self-reflection provides Moreau with a distorted view of his hierarchical ranking over other humans and animals. Relying on his lack of pain, and thus his lack of empathy, he justifies his scientific experiments through examining himself as a superhuman in relation to others by comparing,
“‘But you 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 long as visible or audible pains drive you, so long as pain underlies your propositions about sin, so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely what an animal feels’” (Wells, 73).
Moreau begins by asserting his dominance over Prendick, a well-educated man of high esteem. In order to do this, he asserts his superiority by rejecting pain. He continues to degrade Prendick by arguing that he is driven by the animalistic tendency to allow pain to affect his empathic mental processes and limit his exploration into advanced scientific hypotheses. The correlation between pain and empathy occur in Moreau’s transition from the topic of pain to Prendick’s ability to process “what an animal feels.” However, this analysis does not consider all of the aspects of the human that drive conscious thought and action.
Descartes and Moreau use themselves to define the importance of the observable in hierarchical distinctions between animals, humans, and the divine. The argument of “I” only addresses the component of human reality that can be defined through the self. This is a very primal understanding of the human because it relies on what Descartes knows as the most observable form of truth. Although Moreau believes that he is more evolved, he acknowledges that the average human is empathic by criticizing Prendick. Descartes argument does not directly address the topic of pain, but it can be used to deduce that it is a deceptive, outside factor that can both influence and be known to the body and the soul. Due to its external presence, it is possible for Moreau to overcome and form a hierarchy around the perception of pain. Unlike Descartes, Moreau places himself at the top of his hierarchy, disregarding the presence of God, and establishing himself as the most knowledgeable source because he is willing to ignore pain, in the form of intersubjective relationships, in the pursuit of science. Inadvertently, Moreau defines himself as a pseudo-human, and relates the actual human to be more closely related to animals, which Descartes provides a differentiation from, using physical and cognitive indicators.
Plato describes the human as being in a constant struggle with its two agencies, the body and the soul. The soul’s pursuit for honesty and virtue is deterred by the body’s vulnerability to pleasure and pain. Inadequacy is a result of the persistent temptations of the body that Plato describes as, “As long as we possess the body, and our soul is contaminated by such an evil, we’ll surely never adequately gain what we desire—and that, we say, is truth. Because the body affords us countless distractions” (Plato 12). In this passage, Plato concludes that the duality of a human leads to a life of dissatisfaction because the soul can never attain what it desires as long as it is in conjunction with the body. However, a person possesses their body for as long as they live as a mortal, so they will never experience their desires.
The beastmen represent the importance of the soul to the human condition through the society that they form. Moreau explains his discontent with his scientific products by stating, “There's something they call the law. Sing hymns about ‘all thine’. They build themselves their dens, gather fruit and pull herbs–marry even. But I can see through it all, see into their very souls, and see there nothing but the souls of beasts, beasts that perish–anger, and the lusts to live and gratify themselves…Yet they're odd” (Wells, 79). He is dissatisfied with his work because he cannot fully replicate the appearance or thought of an actual human. The beastmen try to mimic humans by creating laws requiring them to speak, walk upright, and refrain from consuming meat. However, the temptations to revert to their animalistic nature is greater than Moreau’s scientific capabilities. Calling attention to the fact that the beastmen’s souls remain animalistic rather than convert in accordance with their outward appearances describes why they will never satisfy Moreau’s aspirations.
Plato’s description of the roles of the body and the explains the characterizations of Moreau and the beastmen. Moreau is dissatisfied because his senses, which Plato argues are his bodily functions, perceive the beastmen and their ritualistic society as animalistic, despite his dedication to his practice. Meanwhile, the beastmen create laws to deter their animalistic instincts from surfacing into bodily actions. These laws include mimicking human behaviors that are outwardly observable. However, they cannot think critically because their soul operates based on the nature of animals rather than the rationality of humans, which Plato explains as their quest of wisdom. Moreau arguing that he can “see into their very souls” is representative of him recognizing their antonymous motivations to developed humans.
Descartes introduces the theory of altering reality and managing fears through the use of partaking in a dream state. Fear and pain force thinking beings to adjust their cognitive perceptions in accordance with falsities. Descartes argues that partaking in a state of dreaming threatens the validity of God and the human condition by asserting,
“And just as a captive who in sleep enjoys an imaginary liberty, when he begins to suspect that his liberty is but a dream, fears to awaken, and conspires with these agreeable illusions that the deception may be prolonged, so insensible of my own accord I fall back into my former opinions, and I dread awakening from this slumber, lest the laborious wakefulness which would follow the tranquility of this repose should have to be spent not in daylight, but in the excessive darkness of the difficulties which have just been discussed” (Descartes, 8).
The term “captive” provides the context of a prisoner situation, suggesting that fear is the prison that suppresses the freedom of reality. A privilege of the human condition is being able to critically analyze our observations, but dreaming diminishes the reliability of the human intellect, which resides most purely within the soul. Descartes acknowledges that being awake makes one vulnerable to the atrocities associated with the unknown, which is hidden within the “darkness.” Although dreaming is a form of deception, for captives of a situation it is more preferable to the “laborious” process of confronting the truth.
The beastmen, fearful of Moreau’s power to inflict pain on them, create rules and chants that encourage them to falsely imitate human behaviors by channeling a cult-like trance. Prendick summarizes his initial encounter with the beastmen’s hymns by recollecting,
“We ran through a long list of prohibitions, and then the chant swung round to a new formula: ‘His is the House of Pain. ‘His is the Hand that makes. ‘His is the Hand that wounds. ‘His is the Hand that heals.’ And so on for another long series, mostly quite incomprehensible gibberish to me, about Him, whoever he might be. I could have fancied it a dream, but never before have I heard chanting in a dream” (Wells, 59).
The beastmen refer to Moreau as “Him”; the capitalization of the pronoun “Him” symbolizes the power structure that Moreau has instilled in the beastmen. This form of the pronoun is usually used exclusively to refer to God. The creative experiments that Moreau conduct result in the
repetition of words such as “pain” and “wounds,” which implies that there is fear associated with their relationship to Moreau. They respond with rituals that condition them to uphold the societal norms of humans, rather than their primitive states.
The idea of dreaming as an altered reality is a common theme in both passages. Descartes theory that dreams provide a refuge from fear can be applied to explain the adaptions that the beastmen make. Although their lives after vivisection do not follow a natural process, the beastmen concede to the fears because they will become prisoners to Moreau’s gun if they display signs of reversion. The method of deception that the beastmen implement into their society are parallel to the method of dreaming that Descartes explains as a coping mechanism. A false representation that relies on mental conditioning is not a true representation of the natural qualities of the beastmen, which have become “prisoners” as a sacrifice for Moreau’s scientific endeavors. Dreams suppress reality such as the rules disguise animalistic tendencies.
The human experience is defined through the various characters of Doctor Moreau, Prendick, and the beastmen and how they cognitively process pain, fear, and their binaries. Descartes establishes a foundation of reality through himself and expands his concrete knowledge to encompass the reality of God and his surroundings, while ignoring factors of deception. The body and the soul are both significant to the human condition because they contribute to the bodily indicators, which Moreau mostly succeeds in achieving for his subjects, but also the cognitive processes and natural instincts which are more complex and rigid. Distinguishing between humans and animals is a difficult task because instincts of the soul, carried out by temptations of the body and its environment, are likely to override engineered façades, despite fear. This explains why the beastmen struggle to uphold their laws, even with the threat of Moreau and his “House of Pain,”; the beastmen channel their respective predispositions to overcome Moreau’s hierarchy by ending his life and future scientific endeavors.