92 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



missed ; life is a thing for use, and is to be used freely and sacrificed 

 freely, whenever good is to be won or evil avoided by such sacrifice or 

 use ; the man who is ever ready to face death for others' sakes, to 

 save others from grinding pain, has always been reckoned a hero ; and 

 what is heroic if done for another, is surely permissible, at least, if 

 done for one's self; the man who could voluntarily give up his life to 

 Bave another from months of slow torture, would win everybody's good 

 word : why should he be debarred from taking a like step when the 

 person to be rescued is himself? " 



It is furthermore urged that the sacredness of life is violated by 

 existing medical practice, where, in cases of extreme and hopeless suf- 

 fering, physicians administer drugs which give present relief, at the 

 expense of shortening the patient's life. 



To the objection that submission to the will of Providence forbids 

 the shortening of pain in this way, the writer replies that " by the same 

 principle we should submit to the will of Providence, and not seek to 

 escape any pain. Not submission to surrounding circumstances 

 another term for God's will but successful effort to bend them to his 

 purposes, is man's chief business here ; and every useful thing he does 

 is a successful attempt to change, for his own or others' benefit, some 

 of the conditions of life which surround him." 



And thus the author of " Euthanasia " goes on attacking current 

 ideas, and taking his own view of the economy of the world. Nature 

 is to him not a mighty, beneficent mother, any more than she is a dread 



and relentless power 



" Red in tooth and claw 

 With ravine." 



" Death by disease is always death by torture, and the wit of man 

 has never devised torture more cruel than are some of Nature's meth- 

 ods of putting her victims to death. 



" One of the main facts, then, that men have to make familiar to 

 their thoughts and to adjust their lives to, is, that they are born into a 

 world on the painful riddle of which speculation can throw no light, 

 but the facts of which press hard against them on every hand ; and 

 from these facts the truth stands out clear and harsh, th^t not enjoy- 

 ment, but, in the main, struggle and suffering, is what they have to 

 look for, and that, to bring this suffering into bearable proportions, 

 should be one of the chief aims of their lives." 



The publication of this essay made but little stir at first. But it 

 was separated from the volume, and published in a pamphlet with 

 preface by Rose Mary Crawshay, and in this shape went to the third 

 edition. The subject has been lately taken up in the Fortnightly 

 Hevietc, by Mr. Tollemache, under the title of " A NeAv Cure for In- 

 curables." Planting himself on Mr. Williams's ground, he reproduces 

 his chief arguments, and adds others, with a view of strengthening the 

 case. To illustrate how far pain reconciles us to death, he says: 



