The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1873-04-26
AN EASY DEATH.

L. AANSAN AZ II" -A~AS ASSAAAO VI
the teachings of the Nihilistic school, at
the head Of which stands Schopenhauer
and Hartmann, than party lately form
ed in England which is solving, satis-
factorily to itself, the problem of an easy
death.
They propose, that where recovery is
hopeless, and the PATIENTS willing, chic
reform or some other anBsthetic should
be given to destroy consciousness and
put the sufferer to, a quick and painless
death.
No one who has followed the teachings
of the Nihilists can be surprised at this
%outgrowth of a belief which contends
that pain is the only positive fact in hui
man experience, and the only happiness
it's removal or absence. There is no "af-
ter" to life, no responsibility beyond
the one we owe to the great whole of
Humanity. The moral possibilities of
pain as a puritierand elevator, isscouted
by these philosophers. The world should
be over for q man who can no longer
serve the world. When his muscles no
longer help him to work for it, when his
brain refuses to think for it-kill hims
When a woman, through sin, becomes a
moral blot upon a'family or acommuni-
ty-kill her. Alexander Dumas, Jr., the
notorious novelist, has lately carried
theory into practice by assisting the hus-
band of a frail woman to detecthis wife
in an inidelity, and then advised him
to kill her.
The man was brought up for the muir
der, and the novelist Intercepted as to
his motives for counselling the crime.
He defended himself upon the same
grounds that the Nihilists do who would
destroy human life when it ceases to be
profitable to itself or others. He added:
cit is necessary to regenerate the family
byassassinatiOn. Thatismy conviction"
The doctrine of this "Euthanasia" is
full of crimeful aspects. Putting entirely
out of view the religious responsibilities
of man to his Creator, (for with a God
the Nihilist has nothing to do,) this
way of putting people out of the world
when Doctors give them up, is, to say
the least, rather a dangerous precedent.
In the first place, the fat of an unskillful
physician is not always reliable. Men
will sometimes get we'll when, by all the
rules ofmedicine and disease, theyshould
die. There are cases of recovery too
when dissolution had apparently set in.
In the second place, people are pois-
oned out of the world often enough by
those who would profit by their death,
without furnishing them with a legiti-
mate excuse for it. There would indeed
cease to be crime records because murder
would no longer be a crime, and justice
and law would no more hold place in a
Nihilistic world.
Wedo not anticipat any widely spread
evil from these pernicious doctrines.
Men hold their lives too dearly to put
them at the mercy of any such contin-
gencies. The theory does very well on
paper, though even there, its absurdity
is manifest, but let one Of the propaga-
tors be stretched on a bed of illness, and
his token of consent to his humiliation
would be long coming.
AS for the consent of the patient in
such cases, that is all bosh. When peo-
pie reach the stage Of impossible recov-
cry, they are not usually conscious, or if
conscious, the mind is so weakened by
disease that it isincapable of free agency.
AS for our own part, we think we
would prefer going out of the world as
the Lord wills it, without having some
anxious friend clap a chlorof0rm bottle
to our nose, "that he may go off easy,
poor fellow" No such Euthanasia for
us. We will accept the positive fact of
pain to the end of natures struggle,
without the helpful ansethetie SO lauded
by the new doctrine.