The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-09-11
AN IMPOSSIBLE SUGGESTION

AN IMPOSSIBLE SUGGESTION
An eminent French medical authority
has prepared an elaborate work pro-
posing a system by which persons af-
hicted with incurable disease shall be
permitted n even assisted, after due
examination by competent medical au-
thority, to put an end to their own
lives. The idea is not at all a new one,
either in theory or in practice. Ad-
vanced scientists who have succeeded
in subordinating the human element
entirely to the scientific have very gen.
orally held to this abstract theory,
which no one Of them probably would
have been willing to see put in prac-
tice In his own family, although he
might in his own person. In an older
world the habit was common enough;
and the stoical Roman, aweary Of the
world and satisfied that the balance of
desire was on the side Of leaving 1t,
opened his veins while reposing in his
warm and perfumed bath and passed
easily out into the great unknown. No
doubt many persons even in our own
time seek this route Of escape when
they can do 8 without scandal, and
the number of suicides is never fully
chronicled. Yet for all that there is no
proposal more repugnant to the mind,
none which is less possible Of general
adoption and therefore none which 1t
Is less profitable to discuss.
The mandate against the acceptance
of the idea lies deeper even than the re-
ligious instinct. For it commands those
without religious belief, as well as the
votaries of faith. If the Almighty as
set his canon 'gainst self slaughter'
in the tenets Of the churches, he has
planted it no less firmly in the inmost
recesses of the human heart. The be-
lever holds suicide. a deadly crime.
The non-believer holds it cowardice.
Inasmuch as courage is the first essen
tial Of manhood, the quality whose lack
any human being is last to confess, in
whose possession there is more pride
than even in the name of honesty, he
has fallen low indeed who turns his
back upon the conflict and fees to Ills
he knows not of to evade the blows of
fate.
We should meet the scientific profess
that his theorem, which he may smile
to have called inhuman or irreligious
Or base, is in the highest and deepest
sense absolutely unscientific. No phrase
holds greater reverence in the scientific
world than "the struggle Tor existence
That sums up the scientific ideal. 1t is
the seeking after life; to gain 1t, to hold
1t, to save it under all conditions. This
is the law OF material evolution. The
mysterious purpose behind this univer-
sal, primal, overmastering desire the
scientist does not pretend to fathom.
He admits the law. Accepting it in it's
widest scope, it is not only prohibitive
of a painless release from the suffer-
ings of life, but marks that refuge as
unnatural, as well as inhuman. 1t Is
against the curse and order of nature,
whose inscrutable DEGREES for life, for
struggle, for the last culver Of a mus
Gle while strength to move it remains,
we must obey.
1t is not merely hat human nature
rebels against a suggestion superficial
ly humane; it is not merely tina nam
hood turns from it as a craven act; it
Is not. merely that the universal re-
Hgious instinct denounces it as a deadly
sin; but, even more fundamental than
all these, is the II forbid' of nature it
self. She who made US what we are
and moves US to unknown purposes
and unseen fates, has fixed the SOL
der In his place through wounds and
scourges and tortures ~unspeakable UNI
til she gives the last word of recall.
The idea set forth is unscientifc to the
last degree, is a mere degeneration of
the scientific attitude into that utter
sentimentalism which it processes SO to
abhor.
PETER, Of Kansas. is coming to MIN
nesota to teach the Republicans how
to vote the. straight ticket. And even
this will be forgiven him if he changed