By advocating painless removal of incurable idiots and lunatics,
incorrigible criminals and irreclaimable drunkards from this vale of
tears Dr. W. Duncan McKim provoked many a respectable but otherwise
blameless person to throw a catfit of great complexity and power. Yet
Dr. McKim seemed only to anticipate the trend of public opinion and
forecast its crystallization into law. It is rapidly becoming a question
of not what we ought to do with these unfortunates, but what we shall be
compelled to do. Study of the statistics of the matter shows that in
all civilized countries mental and moral diseases are increasing,
proportionately to population, at a rate which in the course of a few
generations will make it impossible for the healthy to care for the
afflicted. To do so will require the entire revenue which it is possible
to raise by taxation--will absorb all the profits of all the industries
and professions and make deeper and deeper inroads upon the capital
from which they are derived. When it comes to that there can be but
one result. High and humanizing sentiments are angel visitants, whom we
entertain with pride and pleasure, but when _fine_ entertainment becomes
too costly to be borne we "speed the parting guest" forthwith. And
it may happen that in inviting to his vacant place a less exciting
successor--that in replacing Sentiment with Reason--we shall, in this
instance, learn to our joy that we do but entertain another angel. For
nothing is so heavenly as Reason; nothing is so sweet and compassionate
as her voice--
"Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,"
Is it cruel, is it heartless, is it barbarous to use something of the
same care in breeding men and women as in breeding horses and dogs?
Here is a determining question: Knowing yourself doomed to hopeless
idiocy, lunacy, crime or drunkenness, would you, or would you not,
welcome a painless death? Let us assume that you would. Upon what
ground, then, would you deny to another a boon that you would desire for
yourself?