DEATH 



cent. (29.6), while the total population only increased 

 5.6 per cent. In our day the number of lunatics in 

 civilized countries is, on the average, five-sixths per 

 thousand. If the total population of Europe is put 

 at three hundred and ninety to four hundred millions, 

 we have at least two million lunatics among them, and 

 of these more than two hundred thousand are incurable. 

 What an enormous mass of suffering these figures in- 

 dicate for the invalids themselves, and what a vast 

 amount of trouble and sorrow for their families, what 

 a huge private and public expenditure! How much 

 of this pain and expense could be spared if people 

 could make up their minds to free the incurable from 

 their indescribable torments by a dose of morphia! 

 Naturally this act of kindness should not be left to the 

 discretion of an individual physician, but be determined 

 by a commission of competent and conscientious 

 medical men. So, in the case of other incurables and 

 great sufferers (from cancer, for instance), the "re- 

 demption from evil" should only be accomplished by 

 a dose of some painless and rapid poison when they 

 have expressed a deliberate wish (to be afterwards 

 juridically proved) for this, and under the control of an 

 authoritative commission. 



The ancient Spartans owed a good deal of their 

 famous bravery, their bodily strength and beauty, as well 

 as their mental energy and capacity, to the old custom of 

 doing away with new-born children who were bom 

 weakly or crippled. We find the same custom to-day 

 among many savage races. When I pointed out the 

 advantages of this Spartan selection for the improve- 

 ment of the race in 1868 (chapter vii. of the History of 

 Creation) there was a storm of pious indignation in the 

 religious journals, as always happens when pure reason 

 ventures to oppose the current ]jrejudices and traditional 

 beliefs. But I ask: What good does it do to humanity 



119 



