The Washington herald., 1915-11-18
A Difficult Question.

A little child is lying in Chicago hospital
awaiting an operation that the mother and the
physician have agreed shall not be performed. Ono
the child is not waiting and knows nothing and is
not capable of knowing anything When its little
puff of life goes out its little organs will to
function and that is all 1t has brain, but it has
never had mind in the proper sense and will
never have one The little spark of divine FIRE that
we call the soul has more chance Of express
ing itself in terms of human intelligence than if it
were walled up in stone. But, it appears the
child's life can be saved. A cripple and an idiot
it can be preserved upon the earth, not human
indeed, but an animate of warped and irregu-
larly functionng organs.
And so the question arises: Shall the opera
ton be performed, the poor simulacrum Of hu-
man being preserved to brief life in which, in all
probability, dull pain will be the only registered
sensation, or shall it be permitted to go out
candlewise, and the celestial spark return whence
it came, the SOUL relieved of the physical pris-
on in which it is strangling, join the bands of
happy spirits that play eternally in the nurseries
of heaven? These are the facts of the case, the
only facts indeed that any argument can be based
upon. Shall a child be operated upon when the
effect of the operation will be to keep it alive,
cripple and an idiot, shall it be allowed to die?
The first question that suggests itself is Of
course, What certainty is there that the opera
ton might not after all prove entirely success
full and the child grow up hale in body and sensi-
bic in mind?" That of course is a question for
the doctors They know the limitations of their
art. OF course the thing to do from the stand
point of the materialist would be to operate on
the child and then, if later it was found to be a
cripple and an idiot expected, to chloroform it.
But that they cannot do If the nearly dead child
is converted into live idiot at this time it must
so remain But if the doctors cannot deal in abso-
lutte certainties in matters of this kind they deal
in very strong probabilities.
Without doubt the greater part of the objec-
tons to the course taken by the physician and the
mother in the case is based upon an unexpressed
belief that the doctor probably does not know
what he is talking about. Yet that belief is prob
ably i'll founded, though the personal expert
ence of the believer appears to justify it Again,
those doctors who believe the operation should
be performed in any event probably little
sceptica of their colleagues diagnosis though of
course they would not say Then again. it is
to be feared that to doctor the continued exist
ence of one idiot more or less is not a matter of
much moment. 1t is practical question rather
than the Subject matter of a chapter of the phil
osophy of life and death. But to the philosophical
mind trying to reach conclusion it can make
no difference whether it is mathematicalE certain
or only reasonably probable that the child if it is
preserved alive, will be a cripple an imbecile
or both.
Only three persons or classes of persons have
any interest in the extinction representation of
life These are the owner of the life, the par
ems, relatives and friends and the state. The
owner of the life usually finds it good and tries to
protect it. But in the case of little child there