DEATH 



in carrying out their wish and ending their sufferings by 

 a painless death. 



This question is of great importance, both in practical 

 philosophy and in juridical and medical practice, and, as 

 opinions differ very much on the subject, it seems 

 advisable to deal with it here. I start from my own 

 personal opinion, that sympathy is not only one of the 

 noblest and finest functions of the human brain, but 

 also one of the first conditions of the social life of the 

 higher animals. The precepts of Christian charity 

 which the gospels rightly place in the very foreground 

 of morality, were not first discovered by Christ, but they 

 were successfully urged by him and his followers at a 

 time when refined selfishness threatened the Roman 

 civilization with decay. These natural principles of 

 sympathy and altruism had arisen thousands of years 

 before in human society, and are even found among all 

 the higher animals that live a social life. They have 

 their first roots in the sexual reproduction of the lower 

 animals, the sexual love and the care of the young on 

 which the maintenance of the species depends. Hence] 

 the modern prophets of pure egoism, Friedrich Nietzsche, 

 Max Stirner, etc., commit a biological error when they 

 would substitute their morality of the strong for uni- 

 versal charity, and when they ridicule sympathy as a 

 weakness of character or an ethical blunder of Christian- 

 ity. It is just in its insistence on sympathy that the 

 Christian teaching is most valuable, and this part of its 

 system will survive long after its dogmas have sunk into 

 oblivion. However, this lofty duty must not be con- 

 fined to men, but extended to "our relations," the 

 higher vertebrates, and, in fact, to all animals whose 

 brain-organization seems to point to the possession of 

 sensation and a consciousness of pleasure and pain. 

 Thus, for instance, in the case of the domestic animals 

 which we use daily in our service, and which have an 



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