THE RIGHT TO LIFE

OT so long ago, in one of our cities, an extremely defective baby was allowed to die. Parent, surgeon, and a number of consulting doctors concurred in the decision; and an operation calculated to keep the unfortunate alive was not performed. Then the case received publicity in the press. There were presently reported a number of commendatory expressions from competent sources, but the main result was a rather full chorus of condemnation. Some of the objections were reasonable enough: there was fear of the consequences of the practice, if countenanced by silence or otherwise, rather than disapproval of what was done in the actual case in hand. But the voices that sounded their notes most confidently were those which invoked religion and asserted "the sacredness of life"; and there were minatory references to the child's "natural right to life." It was proposed to punish the surgeon attending and most probably he has been or will be punished, socially if not by process of law.

Some people hurried to the biographical records and collected names of defectives who later became useful to their communities. There was a show of reason here, but the fact that kinds and degrees of defectiveness were not specified gave to this proceeding the appearance of a swift grasp at analogy-hasty, sketchy, uncritical, impressionistic in the interest of prepossession. Analogy is, by its nature, an instrument of exposition rather than of reasoning.

What this predominating type of objector was expressing was his sentiment rather than his reasoned opinion; his prepossessions rather than his cool judgment. It is of these prepossessions that I wish to speak — these traditional ways of looking at things, which are not ques

tioned but become a matter of feeling rather than of intellect. In this case the prepossessions assert that life is "sacred," or is a thing to which everyone has a "natural" right. Much of this sort of thing is heard, from certain sources, every time there is a murder-trial followed by a sentence of death, and again after the execution of that sentence. We are not now discussing the whole case against capital punishment, nor yet the whole case respecting the treatment of a defective infant; but only the attitude toward both cases, or either, which results from the assumption of the "sacredness" of life or from that of a “natural right to life."

"But," says some suspicious reader, "hold on a minute. Do I understand that you mean to assault the idea of human brotherhood, of pity and mercy and sympathy, of humanitarianism in general?" By no means. Anyone who is at all conversant with the past of the race knows that such sentiments are the product of a long course of social evolution and may be taken to have demonstrated their "survival value." They represent the view of life and things that has automatically formed around a certain stage in that evolution. Humanitarianism attends this age, just as the philosophy of repression or of enfranchisement of the joy of life has accompanied other stages. But such a sentiment, though broadly accordant with conditions, easily lends itself to deductions as to conduct which readily run out into extreme variations, or sentimentality. Such variations need control, if the sentiment of the period is to correspond with the actual conditions of the society's life, and not with something that "never was on sea or land." Otherwise we get a disharmony of thought and fact, dogmatism, and all the sterile word-churning that attends the resolve somehow to reconcile the irreconcilable. Hence also pain, disillusion, and discouragement, when it appears that life will not conform to theory, but goes hard on a theory that does not conform to life. It is always ominous when men refuse to

test up their life-theories on actual conditions - when any philosophy of life has come to be regarded as a thing set apart from criticism on the basis of facts, and from reasoning in the light of them -- when, in lieu of, or by way of shrinking from, actual handling and free examination, refuge is taken in expressions such as “sacredness," or the "absolute," or the "natural."

For this is what men are wont to do when they resent the examination of cherished ideas, and yet, as they cast vaguely about, see no definite case to support them. They take refuge in the supernatural, or in the "natural,” meaning by the latter term that which was there from the outset — inherent, innate, inalienable. It is this refuge of those who assert the "sacredness" or the "natural right" to life that we propose to examine. Perhaps we can emerge with a clearer idea of what the actual and undeniable right to life really is, and by what force it is guaranteed.

If the sacredness of life means that, given by God, it is sacred to Him, and cannot rightly be either taken away or renounced, then we stand before a case of revelation, and there is no object or use in arguing about it. In fact, any possible accumulations, even of scientific evidence, can be met by an assertion of the doctrine of mystery: "what we believe may seem contrary to your knowledge and science; it is, however, not contrary to them, but above them."

If anyone believes, and wishes still to believe, that he has had a revelation, no argument ever persuades him that he has not. You can refer to the very Book of revelation, but you are somehow evaded. Confront a Puritan with the statement of Christ himself that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," and he does just what the Pharisees did — takes refuge in the Old Testament, and ignores the New. Then follow him up and present a case, resting upon Old Testament support, for slavery or polygamy; and watch him fly back to the

New, and hunt out some passage which he thinks will justify his views. And when you are done with him, reflect upon the possibilities of elusion that inhere in interpretation. Plainly here is no arena for the exercises of reason.

But there are a good many people who accept current traditional views without ever thinking of them as subject to rational examination. They are, however, in theory, willing enough to fall in with the so-called "law of parsimony," which forbids us to have recourse to higher causes when lower will explain. They do not need to account for the crash of thunder by some ancient daemonistic theory. To such it may be enlightening to reflect that the idea of the sacredness of life did not exist in the earliest stages of the evolution of the race; that it, and also the conception of the right of all to life, came to exist during that evolution; and that we now know something about how both ideas have come to be. It is permitted to explain by lower causes how this eventuated just as it is conceded that we may now demonstrate geological sequences without constant recourse to the supernatural, or the "ascent of man" without a Miltonic Paradise and Fall.

There is a real right to life and a real sacredness to life, just as there is a real right to property and a real sacredness to it. There can be no objection to using these terms if it is realized that the conceptions for which they stand are a product of evolution, as are all the rest of our notions; and if they are used as sound conceptions standing over against tested social realities. But if these terms are going to be caught at irrationally and emotionally, as convenient weapons for or against what happens to please or displease us, and especially if they are to be endowed with some mystical content, then there is occasion for protest. In connection with the case cited, they seem to have been used, for the most part, in an unintelligent manner; and objection to such use may well take the form of a sketch of how they came to be.

In the evolution of society it is the right to life which was antecedent to the sacredness of life. Let us therefore consider the former first. This right was not in nature; man as man was not born with it. When certain philosophers, in relatively modern times, got to reflecting upon rights, they could see no origin for them in the evolution. of the race as they then conceived of it. But what men cannot explain they are wont to refer to creation, or nature, or "second-nature." The temper of these philosophers, in revolt as they were against the rigidity and artificiality of an epoch just closing, was to get back to nature. Hence they pronounced the right to life a "natural right." Other natural rights were cited then, and have been added unto since to liberty; to the pursuit of happiness; to procreation, or, at least, to mating; to work; to leisure; to equality.

What can be said of the natural right to life can be said of all natural rights, so-called, viz., there is no such thing. A right is no right unless it is enforceable against something or somebody. How, then, enforce a "natural" right to life? An unarmed man meets a tiger in the jungle. No natural right to life will save him. His right is a minus quantity if both man and beast are as nature fashioned them. But the tiger's is positive at any rate he is going to live. This introduces us to the consideration that right must have might behind it. "Might may not make right, says a forceful writer, "but it makes what is." The man, meeting the tiger, has an enforceable right to life measured exactly by the degree of his superiority in might over the beast. It becomes positive to man if he can kill or drive away the antagonist; but that can be only if he has fire, let us say, or an express rifle.

If the same thing were not true of the relations of man and man, on the lowest stages of human development known, what has just been said would be irrelevant. Enemies had no rights at all, except those which they gained over one another by force; least of all were their