Thirdly: because what should be a valuable asset to society, contributing substantially to her strength, becomes a hostile power weakening her and hindering her progress. Any of these three considerations received separately is sufficient to convince us of our obligations to this uglier section of the weak, when combined their force is very great. But when we speak to them of peace do they not make them ready to battle? No, their case is not so hopeless as that. David lived under the Mosaic Dispensation, and Moses could give but the law whereas Christ has given His Life. Our method will determine everything. Good advice, good books, good laws will do but little; good work will accomplish all. "The greatest good of the greatest number" is a false ideal and absolutely unworthy either of our charity or our science. "The ultimate good of all" is the end society is destined to accomplish, and anything less is too little for her, anything more is impossible even to conceive.
In working towards this ideal, which we cannot describe with greater definiteness, we are bound to recognise that Goodness is our safe and only guide. The general direction of our advance in the past we can easily trace, but the purpose of the devious paths through which we were led is too difficult to understand. Our present puzzles us, our future sometimes appals us. Some rush ahead to see what lies before us and come back injured and pass away as pessimists, others hesitate to advance at all. We cannot outstrip our guiding pillar of light; but following it we are safe to advance. And in following, one of the first convictions that comes home to us is that we must allow no waste, neither in the lives of others nor in the energies of ourselves. With this conviction soon comes the startling fact that the energies we are allowing to waste are identically those which were given to us to save the lives of others which are wasting. A wonderful independence exists among us. The social system is bound together by ties of nature, and not merely by those of commerce or benefit. Man is social, not merely gregarious. He enters into the life of his fellow-man and establishes relations which we are bound to call spiritual. Through the media of these relations, influences traverse which are of the most profound we know. These relations when established compel us to acknowledge our duties to one another and give us a delight in discharging them. This delight in turn becomes the power, which opens the eyes to the realization of the great principle of self-sacrifice. Egoism and altruism are not to be mutually exclusive. To seek our own happiness is not to be indifferent to the happiness of society. For what is happiness? not pleasure, but self-realization, and we cannot realise self without realising society.
This interdependence which exists between man and man, and which makes it possible for us to influence one another so powerfully for good or for evil, points out to us that the true aim of every man, namely, to unite his work with that of his fellow-man in a grand co-operative undertaking for the advancement and betterment of society regarded as a whole and with regard for its units. We cannot realise self if engaged in competition man against man in order to satisfy private ambition. Our object should be to unite and our hostility be provoked, not against one another, weak or strong, but against the powers which attack us individually and collectively.
Necessity then lays the obligation upon us to give our first attention to the rescue of the weak. It was the recognition of this obligation which sent the Christian-Maidens into the suburbs of Rome seeking the exposed offspring of unnatural parents. To say that they would have been better dead, is to speak with that facility which requires neither mental nor moral perception.
It is the recognition, in part, of this obligation which accounts for hospitals, asylums and other charitable institutions. Hence also we endeavour to shelter those born deficient in mental or moral power. Dr Chapple seems to think that the result of all this is that we have made a pretty mess of society. He says, of these weaklings, that Nature has decreed that they should die. A most unscientific statement. Are these charitable efforts to be regarded as profane interference with the sacred decrees of Nature? Nature's decrees are inviolate and none can disturb them. Because these weak, if left unaided, would perish, is that to say that Nature has decreed that they should die? If so, we must say of a man, stricken with typhoid fever, that Nature has decreed that he should die, and that any effort to save him would be but a profane interference on our part with Nature.
What does Nature say of these that
they do not live,
they cannot live, or
they must not live?
History has shown that in the past they do not live.
But in order to discover the decree of Nature we must make a full and exhaustive enquiry into the possibilities which exist under the laws of Nature. So far as this enquiry has advanced it has been made quite clear that the charitable effort of man will recover many that would otherwise perish. The whole science of therapeutics is based upon this discovery.
Dr Chapple says of defectives that they do live but that they must not. Two arguments he brings forward. The first is that Nature has decreed that they should not. This must be a secret communication, for it is not universal knowledge, and the operation of Nature's laws certainly appears to contradict it. The second argument is that they are a burden. The burden analysed amounts to this:—
(a). They are a misery to themselves.
(b). They are too costly.
(c). They hinder the progress of society.
(d). They threaten to overwhelm society.