It may be well, also, to point out the wide line of demarcation which
separated euthanasia from what is ordinarily called suicide. Euthanasia,
like suicide, is a voluntarily chosen death, but there is a radical
difference between the motives which prompt the similar act. Those who
commit suicide thereby render themselves useless to society for the
future; they deprive society of their services, and selfishly evade
the duties which ought to fall to their share; therefore, the social
feelings rightly condemn suicide as a crime against society. I do not
say that under no stress of circumstances is suicide justifiable; that
is not the question; but I wish to point out that it is justly regarded
as a social offence. But the very motive which restrains from suicide,
prompts to euthanasia. The sufferer who knows that he is lost to
society, that he can never again serve his fellow-men; who knows, also,
that he is depriving society of the services of those who uselessly
exhaust themselves for him, and is further injuring it by undermining
the health of its healthy members, feels urged by the very social
instincts which would prevent him from committing suicide while in
health, to yield a last service to society by relieving it from a
useless burden. Hence it is that Sir Thomas Moore, in the quotation with
which he began this essay, makes the _social authorities_ of his ideal
state urge euthanasia as the duty of a faithful citizen, while they
yet consistently reprobate ordinary suicide as a _lèse-majestê_ a
crime against the State. The life of the individual is, in a sense, the
property of society. The infant is nurtured, the child is educated,
the man is protected by others; and, in return for the life thus given,
developed, preserved, society has a right to demand from its members a
loyal, self-forgetting devotion to the common weal. To serve humanity,
to raise the race from which we spring, to dedicate every talent, every
power, every energy, to the improvement of, and to the increase of
happiness in, society, this is the duty of each individual man and
woman. And, when we have given all we can, when strength is sinking,
and life is failing, when pain racks our bodies, and the worse agony of
seeing our dear ones suffer in our anguish tortures our enfeebled minds,
when the only service we can render man is to relieve him of a useless
and injurious burden, then we ask that we may be permitted to die
voluntarily and painlessly, and so to crown a noble life with the laurel
wreath of a self-sacrificing death.
ON PRAYER.
THE mania for Prayer-meetings has lately been largely on the increase,
and the continual efforts being made to
"Move the arm that moves the world,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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