LECTURE II.
CRANIOTOMY.
Gentlemen:—In my first lecture I proved to you the existence and the binding power of a higher law than that of human legislators, namely, of the eternal law, which, in His wisdom, the Creator, if He created at all, could not help enacting, and which He is bound by His wisdom and justice to enforce upon mankind.
We are next to consider what are the duties which that higher law imposes upon the physician. In this present lecture I will confine myself to one duty, that of respect for human life.
A duty is a bond imposed on our will. God, as I remarked before, imposes such bonds, and by them He directs free beings to lead worthy lives. As He directs matter by irresistible physical laws, so He directs intelligent and free beings by moral laws, that is, by laying duties or moral bonds upon them, which they ought to obey, which He must require them to obey, enforcing His commands by suitable rewards and punishments. Thus He establishes and enforces the moral order.
Now the duties He lays upon us are of three classes. First, there are duties of reverence and honor towards Himself as our sovereign Lord and Master. These are called the duties of Religion, the study of which does not belong to Medical Jurisprudence. The other classes of duties regard ourselves and our fellow-men, with these we are to deal in our lectures.
I. Order requires that the meaner species of creatures shall exist for the benefit of the nobler; the inert clod of earth supports vegetable life, the vegetable kingdom supplies the wants of animal life, the brute animal with all inferior things subserves the good of man; while man, the master of the visible universe, himself exists directly for the honor and glory of God. In this beautiful order of creation, man can use all inferior things for his own benefit.
This is what reason teaches concerning our status in this world; and this teaching of reason is confirmed by the convictions of all nations and all ages of mankind. The oldest page of literature that has come down to us, namely, the first chapter of the first book of Holy Writ, lays down this same law, and no improvement has been made in it during all subsequent ages. Whether we regard this writing as inspired, as Christians and Jews have always done, or only as the testimony of the most remote antiquity, confirmed by the acceptance of all subsequent generations, it is for every sensible man of the highest authority.
Here is the passage: “God said, Let us make man to our image and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that creepeth upon the earth.” And later on in history, after the deluge, God more explicitly declared the order thus established, saying to Noe and his posterity: “Every thing that moveth and liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herbs have I delivered them to you.” But He emphatically adds that the lives of men are not included in this grant; they are directly reserved for His own disposal. “At the hand of every man,” He says, “will I require the life of man.”
All things then are created for man; man is created directly for God, and is not to be sacrificed for the advantage of a fellow-man. Thus reason and Revelation in unison proclaim that we can use brute animals as well as plants for our benefit, taking away their lives when it is necessary or useful to do so for our own welfare; while no man is ever allowed to slay his fellow-man for his own use or benefit: “At the hand of every man will I require the life of man.”