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Page 5
This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because
it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge--no
temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the
altar--no "place apart" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude
the baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the
gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the
entire pack--earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild
beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague
and velvet-footed household disease--all are fierce and tireless in
pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them;
soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns
to the God who gave it--and gave them.
We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly
beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and
friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in
giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable
adaptation of all things to our needs.
What a fine world it is, to be sure--a darling little world, "so suited
to the needs of man." A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell
relatively no thicker than that of an egg--a shell constantly cracking
and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this
delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which
we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads:
With moldering bones the deep is white
From the frozen zones to the tropic bright.
Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of
climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and
precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of
death and pain--pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless
battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror,
lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears--the fury
and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And
the prize for which we strive, "to have and to hold"--what is it? A
thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So
worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to
hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we
set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no
confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a
prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from
analogy.
THE DEATH PENALTY
I
"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is
always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life
for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of
the divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder
punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the
display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without
provocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning
to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us
you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is
attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in
either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly
reasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to
frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course
these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their
position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of
aggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as
Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be
under the miserable necessity of respecting them.
We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in
this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that
the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is
not loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the
laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still
has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking
we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and
persons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as
disease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and
stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the
human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the
death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not
derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and
punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the
lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a
public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their
deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody
deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death
as evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the
potential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest
benefactor of his century.
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