It may be worth while to consider here for a moment what is perhaps
the best version of the “Golden Rule,” viz., the version of Plato in
Plato’s Laws, Book XI, Prof. Jowett’s translation, which is in these
words, dated about 360 B.C.:
“Thou shalt not touch that which is mine, if thou canst help,
or remove the least thing which belongs to me without my
consent: and may I, being of sound mind, do to others as I
would that they should do to me.”
This is surely a most righteous ethical code, clear, broad
and simple, and in moral and logical effect it is nearer like our
American Declaration of Rights than any other formula, particularly as
regards the recognition of the sacred personal rights of the individual
which is equivalent to the principle of “unalienable rights” in the
Declaration. The phrase, “Thou shalt not touch that which is mine or
remove the least thing which belongs to me without my consent,” is
certainly a most righteous rule of human honesty, sanctity, justice
and security which surely condemns everything like compulsory medicine
which touches and violates the body with inflicted disease, without
consent of the patient, and removes and destroys the most sacred
possession of the individual, viz., bodily sanctity, health and life.