cruelty then as I hate it now. I have always shirked the sight of
anything in pain from my childhood onwards. Yet the fact is that not
only did I nothing to interfere in what I saw going on, but that I
was deeply interested and absorbed in it. I can only explain that to
myself now, by supposing that I knew then, that the creature in front
of me was not of my own kind, and was not, in fact, outraging any law
of its own being. Is not that possible? May I not have collected
unawares so much out of created nature? I am unable to say: all I am
clear about is that here was a thing in the semblance of a boy doing
what I had never observed a boy do, and what if I ever had observed a
boy do, would have flung me into a transport of rage and grief. Here,
therefore, was a thing in the semblance of a boy who was no boy at
all. So much must have been as certain to me then as it is
indisputable now.

One doesn't, at that age, reason things out; one knows them, and is
dumb, though unconvinced, before powerful syllogisms to the contrary.
All children are so, confronted by strange phenomena. And yet I had
facts to go upon if, child as I was, I had been capable of inference.
I need only mention one. If this creature had been human, upon seeing
that I was conscious of its behaviour to the rabbit, it would either
have stopped the moment it perceived that I did not approve or was not
amused, or it would have continued deliberately out of bravado. But it
neither stopped nor hardily continued. It watched its experiment with
interest for a little, then, finding me more interesting, did not
discontinue it, but ceased to watch it. He went on with it
mechanically, dreamingly, as if to the excitation of some other sense
than sight, that of feeling, for instance. He went on lasciviously,
for the sake of the pleasure so to be had. In other words, being
without self-consciousness and ignorant of shame, he must have been