Chapter VI.
THE OBLIGATIONS OF SOCIETY TOWARDS THE WEAK.
The last century is admittedly one in which was witnessed the greatest advances in civilization that the world has ever made. All classes in society may be said to have benefited. The rich have been given greater opportunities for the enjoyment of their riches and an enlarged sphere of usefulness opened to them. The poor have had their lot so greatly ameliorated, that given health, very few men in these colonies at all events, are poor except it be their own fault. The art of healing can now restore to health millions who, had they lived in an earlier century, would have suffered agonies. A universal education has opened the doors of colleges and universities and made it possible for those born in the humblest conditions of life, to attain to the most distinguished positions in the land. The private has become the general; the office boy the judge; the peasant boy the President; the full-blooded aboriginal has graduated through our universities and been called to the Bar; and no man can urge class distinction as being the cause of his failure in any ambition that he has faithfully pursued. All classes have benefited; almost all classes have advanced.
Undeniably this advance has brought greater happiness into the world; whether it will continue will entirely depend upon what basis it is intended to secure this advance.
With an increase of wealth and leisure there is the danger of demoralisation. Our society may substitute a false aim for its true one. Already there are an illimitable number of social reformers who are prepared to describe in very definite terms what is the state of perfected society and what laws are necessary for immediate enactment in order that we might rapidly reach that state. We all acknowledge the existence of the prophetic vision, but we limit its range and regard him most audacious who declares that he can describe the heaven in which society shall finally shelter itself securely from all that prey upon her. Advance as quickly as we may, there is a limit to our speed, and the future being all unknown we scarcely like to take it at a plunge. Nevertheless, these social reformers do a good work—their schemes are at least suggestive, and moreover they point out signs of the times. They show us unmistakably that with our advance there is a tendency to become more and more selfish and to regard with less true charity the condition of the weak. One social reformer will say that there will not be any suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious work of surgeons and nurses. Healing will become a pastime like table-turning. Neither will there be any criminals because the whole social state will be so happy, contented, and knit together that inducement to crime will cease. Others will treat the criminal "scientifically," ensuring reforms at the rate of 100 per cent. with lightning-like rapidity. Which all practically amounts to this, that the problem concerning the future of the weak is shelved. To study it deeply would spoil our best theories and therefore it must be got rid of. Dr Chapple has done nothing more than shelve it, for as we have seen his remedy is both practically and morally impossible. Like all others it betrays the selfish spirit. Like them it regards the weak as if they were nothing less than an intolerable incubus on society, a grit in its bearings. It may be that our social advancement will account for this. In old time when communities were small and fixed, the burden of nursing the helpless necessarily fell upon those who were immediately related by ties of blood or neighbourhood, but now the many changes in the method of living and treatment, has made this to a large extent impossible. Institutions have everywhere sprung up, and it is invariably to the advantage of our sick and afflicted that we should commit them to these institutions, which practice has engendered the belief that all our social obligations can be discharged by monetary payment. Not for one moment need we entertain the idea that this belief will ever become a dominating one. Charitable influences are more powerful. Nor must we charge the authors of selfish systems with being as uncharitable as their systems. They give expression to a fairly strong and somewhat universal sentiment, a sentiment which we would perhaps disown at once upon its being unmasked and which many refuse to obey upon its appeal to them to act in accordance with its principles. This indicates that society sees many of its assailants in but a half-light. It observes neither their malice nor strength but only a dark ugly form which irritates us and which we would if we could banish by an act of will.
This being impossible we must meet our assailants in a clearer light and destroy them. How can this be done, since it would mean the destruction of evil and the powers of evil? Then it cannot be done, but since evil feeds itself upon its victims we can greatly diminish its power and influence by rescuing all who fall within its grasp. Many we know we cannot rescue for there are certain types of disease mental and bodily which defy our skill and some of all types of moral disease also defy our effort. Still it would be better to say that we do not rescue them, than that we cannot, for what was incurable yesterday is curable to-day, and the most deadly diseases are giving clear evidence that their powers to baffle science are fast giving out. That they will give out, scientific men confidently hope. Neither is this hope groundless for past success warrant it and there again point to another assurance, almost a guarantee. The miracles of healing which Our Lord wrought were not only to confer relief upon the suffering, not only to give evidence of His Divinity, but also to promise the triumph which would reward the efforts of man seeking to assist his afflicted brother. We will never heal by a word, neither will we raise the dead, for in these works of might we have peculiar evidence of the Divine Providence; but Christ's miracles seem to promise that He, the Light of the World, will yet grant the fullness of that illumination by which the works of healing are done.
The sick, it is true, receive greater compassion from their fellowmen than the abnormal, the insane and the criminal. But these latter also demand our consideration if for no other reason than that they menace society. To exterminate them is impossible. A persecution with that end would defeat itself, and the persecutors would become morally infinitely worse than the persecuted.
Secondly: their consideration is demanded from the fact that society has produced the evil plight of very many of them. In the great advance, they have fallen and been trampled on. Their right to fall may be denied, but whose right was it to trample on them? To declare it to have been inevitable that they should be trampled on, simply excuses guilt but not obligation. And the obligation is to make reparation as far as possible.