I am, Sir, etc.
HYGEIOLATRY.
The advance of physical science and the simultaneous retreat of religious faith threaten, among their numerous consequences, to introduce a new principle into morals. We may call it Doctor’s Doctrine,—not because it is by any means the exclusive property of the medical profession, or that all doctors can be supposed to hold it, but because it is more rife among them and tells more directly on their work than in the case of other men. It is indeed excusable for a physician to attribute to bodily health, wherewith this new principle is concerned, more importance than a poet, a preacher, or a soldier, is likely to concede to it; and to this natural tendency is added, pretty frequently perhaps, a tolerably defined materialism, which not merely connects but identifies genius, happiness, and virtue with physical soundness, and stupidity, misery, and crime with diseased organization. With such views, and deprived of that vista of an eternal future which alone gives to human things their true perspective, it is not wonderful that many should come to regard bodily health as the summum bonum, and thence to deduce the principle to which I desire to call attention as an innovation in ethics. Reduced as nearly as possible to a formula, that principle is as follows:
That any practice which, in the opinion of experts, conduces to bodily health or tends to the cure of disease, becomes, ipso facto, morally lawful and right.
I do not mean to imply that this principle has yet been clearly stated by any of its adherents, or that they are even generally conscious that they have adopted it. Possibly, many who have practically embodied it in their conduct for years may repudiate it on seeing it defined in words. Nevertheless, it may be traced as the substructure of innumerable arguments on all manner of subjects of public and private interest,—arguments which, if the principle were knocked from under them, would instantly be seen to fall baseless to the ground. It is, in short, the implied major term of a thousand syllogisms which we hear in every debate and read in every magazine and newspaper.
Now, to measure the extent of the change which the adoption of this Doctor’s Doctrine must introduce into ethics, it is only necessary to cast a glance backward at the older view of the relation of duty to health which has hitherto prevailed in the world, and been taught pretty equally by moralists of every school, with the exception of ascetics on one side, and pure hedonists on the other. That older lesson—which we may for convenience call Divine’s Doctrine, since it is the general teaching of every Protestant theologian and moralist, may be summed up in the canon—
Bodily health may not be lawfully sacrificed to our desire of pleasure or fear of pain. It may and ought to be sacrificed to the health of our souls, to the service of our fellowmen, or to fidelity to God.
In other words, it has been taught that the man who injures his health by debauchery is guilty of a serious moral offence, and he who commits suicide is guilty of a crime; but that, on the other hand, the man who sacrifices his health in the performance of his duty as physician, clergyman, or soldier, or in endeavoring to save a fellow-creature from flood or fire, or who gives up life itself rather than forswear himself or renounce his religious faith, or commit a base or unclean action, is not only exonerated from any guilt, but is, in the highest degree, virtuous.
On these lines, Christian civilization may be said to have been built up. The natural selfishness of human nature has been counteracted by the sense of duty; and if, now and then, needless and exaggerated self-sacrifices without adequate reason have been made, and there was room for brave Charles Kingsley to preach the claims of the natural laws of life, a thousand times more often has the sense of duty enabled men and women to perform alike the painful daily tasks whereby our homes are made beautiful and sacred, and the occasional acts of heroism wherewith human existence on earth is crowned and glorified.
It needs no words to prove to any one who reflects that two-thirds of what we have been wont to reverence as homely virtue and all the martyrdoms of history consist precisely in the voluntary sacrifice of health, or of health and life together. To withhold from such sacrifices the meed of moral admiration would be to reverse the judgment of all the ages,—to prefer Sardanapalus and Heliogabalus to Curtius and Regulus, and to treat as a deluded fanatic the apostle who converted the Gentile world, but spent his years in perils by sea and land amid prisons and scourgings. From the crucifixion of Christ to the silent self-immolation of the poor consumptive girl who works half-blinded through the winter’s night to support her aged mother, the holiest and the sweetest things this earth has witnessed have been the actions of those who counted not their lives dear to them, so long as they could obey the law of truth, of righteousness, and of love.