_Euthanasia is an interference with the course of nature, and its herefore an act of rebellion against God_. In considering this objection, we are placed in difficulty by not being told what sense our opponents attach to the word "nature"; and we are obliged once more to ask pardon for forcing these vague and high-flown arguments into a humiliating precision of meaning. Nature, in the widest sense of the word, includes all natural laws: and in this sense it is of course impossible to interfere with nature at all. We live, and move, and have our being in nature; and we can no more get outside it than we can get outside everything. With this-nature we cannot interfere: we can study its laws, and learn how to balance one law against another, so as to modify results; but this can only be done by and through nature itself. The "interference with the course of nature" which is intended in the above objection does not of course mean this impossible proceeding; and it can then only mean an interference with things which would proceed in one course without human agency meddling with them, but which are susceptible of being turned into another course by human agency. If interference with nature's course be a rebellion against God, we are rebelling against God every day of our lives. Every achievement of civilisation is an interference with nature. Every artificial comfort we enjoy is an improvement on nature. Everybody professes to approve and admire many great triumphs of art over nature: the junction by bridges of shores which nature had made separate, the draining of nature's marshes, the excavation of her wells, the dragging to light of what she has buried at immense depths in the earth, the turning away of her thunderbolts by lightning-rods, of her inundations by embankments, of her ocean by breakwaters. But to commend these and similar feats, is to acknowledge that the ways of nature are to be conquered, not obeyed; that her powers are often towards man in the position of enemies, from whom he must wrest, by force and ingenuity, what little he can for his own use, and deserves to be applauded when that little is rather more than might be expected from his physical weakness in comparison to those gigantic powers. All praise of civilisation, or art, or contrivance, is so much dispraise of nature; an admission of imperfection, which it is man's business, and merit, to be always endeavouring to correct or mitigate.* * "Essay on Nature," by John Stuart Mill.