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.
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.
(a). Who can tell whether the weak are absolutely a misery to
themselves. Pain is a mystery which cannot be solved, although to the
suffering its benefits are well known. If they would be better out of
the way might they not be left to decide that matter for themselves?
They, knowing best, cry to us for help. If we were merely gregarious
creatures like wolves or sharks we would tear or destroy them in their
misery; but as social beings we are bound to answer their cry. To cry
for help is instinctive with them, and to respond to the cry is
instinctive with us. Surely this is the voice of Nature and this is the
decree of Nature.
(b). If this argument be admitted then we are bound to declare that the
one aim of both society and individual is to amass wealth. The idea is
too sordid for further consideration.
(c). So far from hindering the social progress they most powerfully
assist it. The mere bearing of one another's burdens has the most
refining and deepening influence upon character. It is most active in
creating and establishing our relations one with another. Compassion for
the suffering creates a tie between them and us. The intention to help
requires our co-operation with others, and so the bond extends uniting
first individuals then groups and then the whole of society. Nor must we
forget the immense advance in surgery and medicine which is due entirely
to the consideration of the lot of the apparently hopeless. Had these
even been allowed to perish we should still have needed our surgeons and
physicians in a well equipped society, if only to teach us how to
prevent seizure by dangerous complaints.
A short time ago many died from ailments which surgery can to-day cure
with but very little suffering on the part of the patient. Is not this a
substantial gain which the bearing of the burden of the weak has brought
to man? To mention other triumphs is but to enlarge. If therefore Nature
has spoken there can be no doubt that it was to give a promise that she
would reward diligent research by revealing the cure of all the ills our
flesh inherits. Thus assured, scientific men are most zealously studying
the most deadly and most obstinate diseases. Against plague, smallpox,
and consumption they can at least give us an effective protection, and
almost hourly we expect to hear the shout of triumph accompanying the
announcement that the victory over cancer has been gained. When stricken
with these diseases we immediately fall into the ranks of the unfit; but
we will thank society for having borne its burden when the healing art
is brought to such an excellence that, when so stricken, we may soon be
restored to the ranks of the fit. The benefit which the past confers
upon us declares imperatively our obligation to the future.
(d). Do they threaten to overwhelm? The power of disease is being
overcome, and therefore the number of the diseased is being lessened. By
being cured, instead of dying, these increase the proportion of the
strong to the weak. The obstinacy of certain hereditary diseases but
asserts the necessity of prosecuting study more enthusiastically.
But if the strong limit their increase they cannot demand that
exterminating methods should be applied to the weak in order to restore
the proportion which they, the strong, have thus by their selfishness
disturbed. Nature gives adequate protection so far as numerical increase
is concerned, and no scientific man will dare to state that this
protection may be disregarded and another demanded.
The Government of India has been charged with pursuing a suicidal policy
in safeguarding the natives against plague and smallpox and in
preventing human sacrifice. Their numbers will increase, food supplies
will give out, or, worst of all, they may become so powerful as to wrest
the supremacy from the European. Charity, however, demands that these
measures shall be taken, and the terrors of the future are at best
hypothetical. This is but another case in which consideration for the
unknown future is apt to hinder us in the discharge of our known duties
to the present. History assures us that the guarantee of the future lies
in the fulfilment of these duties. The height of absurdity is reached
when the attempt is made to establish the proportions of the future.
Such efforts defy man.
The burden of the weak is the burden of the strong, and in the bearing
of it is brought into view the grand and true ideal of society--the good
of all.
Man is endowed with natural powers for assisting his weaker brother,
and, above all these powers he has, through supplication the means of
engaging the Divine Influence, which simply defies all calculation
against the possibility of reform or recovery.
Where charitable effort in the past has not succeeded it is because it
has not gone far enough. Building institutions is sometimes due to a
craze and not charity. Thus evils are sometimes accentuated and not
mitigated. Such failures must spur to redoubled effort. Hope was never
larger than at present.