DEATH 



in carrying out their wish and ending their sufferings by 

 a painless death. 



This question is of great importarice, 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 dnd finest functions of the human brainj 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 inorality, were not first discovered by Christ; but they 

 were successfully urged by him and his followers at a 

 time when rtefined selfishness threatened the Roman 

 civilization with decay. These natural principles of 

 syitipathy and altruism had arisen thousands of years 

 before in huihan 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 modem prophets of pure egoistti, Friedrich Nietzsche, 

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

 wbuld substitute their morality of the strong for uni-" 

 Versal charity, and when they ridicule sympathy as a 

 weakhess 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 

 systerti will survive long after its dogmas have sunk into 

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

 fined to men, but extetided to "our relationSj" 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 



