1:ILLINU NO _MURDER ?
AYOUNG Polish actress shot and killed her fiancé as he lay dying of cancer in a Paris hospital. The doctors had given him a week to live, and he had asked to be spared that useless week of torture. " I could not give him life ; I gave him rest," the girl declared. And a French jury have held her guiltless.
There is no doubt that formally she had committed murder ; and if she had been tried ill England she would probably have been convicted of murder. It is doubtful whether, even in England, she would have served a sen- tence. But if she was truly justified in her action, if she was completely blameless, then all civilized nations should take steps to remove such actions from the category of murder. The problem is of the greatest importance ; there are a hundred other questions which link up with it. And it would be stupid, indeed, heartless, to decide the problem without the most extreme care.
In strict morality the case is clear enough. No indi- vidual has a right to take the life of another ; and none has the right to delegate the power over his life to a private person. We can condemn the action of that distressed and courageous girl without in the slightest degree condemning her. A "great surgeon " is reported as having said : " In the particular case in question a great dcal of trouble would have been saved if the man had shot himself." Possibly some amount of trouble would have been saved, but in strict morality the alterna- tive is equally wrong. There is a sect of Indians who hold that a man who has lived in solitude and the severest asceticism for twelve years has won the right to commit suicide, if he prefers death to life. Such a man has the right if anyone has ; but here again the action is morally wrong ; for a limn's life, in the ideal morality, does not belong to himself at all ; he is not to consider that he even so much as exists for himself. his life belongs to his fellow-men.
From such an ethic it follows that the community has power of life and death over the individual, and the problem, "May the community put a man out of his suffering if there is no hope of his recovery " does not arise as a moral problem. Of course it may. The problem is one of expediency only. " If the community delegates its power to relieve by death the sufferings of an incurable invalid to a committee of doctors, shall we say, or to any impartial and well-informed tribunal, arc we laying ourselves open to abuses ? Will it -cost us more than it is worth ?
- And, first, without any disrespect to the medical profession,- let me say that I have known, and probably the majority of other people have known; cases where a man has been despaired of by doctors, and a definite term has been prophesied for his -life, and yet that man has been alive and happy years after he should have been in his grave. There is in some people such an incredible vigour and resistance of body that they recover from diseases to which everyone might reasonably think they must succumb. Again, the decision as to the degree of pain which called for euthanasia would be complicated to the extreme. For pain is no constant thing ; the same degree of pain will be tolerable to one man and excru- ciating to another. Then, too, the natural closure of death, in the natural course of events, may be a happier conclit sion to life than any induced death. No one would advocate killing a man to save him from three months' pain if it were known that he would finally recover. Why, then, kill a man who has a week's pain before him merely because death will come in due course at the end of the week ? Is he really to be pitied more than the man who has a longer period of suffering before him but will in the long run get better ? Does he suffer more profoundly ?
Lastly, there is the sinister chance of malpractice. For the power of death is the most dangerous weapon we can allow to any man, to any body of men. The safeguards upon that delegated responsibility would have to be so strict that it would be very rarely that any use was made of the power of killing. The observation, the judgment, would be a long process. Perhaps in the end we should find that we had gained nothing.
The facts seem to be these, then. If anyone is a misery to himself and a burden upon the State, then- the State is justified in killing him to give everyone peace. But any attempt to put into practice the • powers that the State possesses would be very dangerous. It is a matter for the conscience of its citizens to decide. But on no account, however we are wrung at heart by pitiable sights, by wasted lives, by agonies and tragedies, can we allow it to be right that an individual should privately take his own life or that of a fellow-man. P.
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