"
"We have such beasts," said Esmo, "in the wild lands, and they are
certainly unsociable and solitary. But men, at least civilised men,
are governed not only by instinct but by interest, and the interest of
each individual in the preservation of social co-operation and social
order is very evident and very powerful. Experience and school
discipline cure children of the habit of indulging mere temper and
spite before they come to be men, and they are taught by practice as
well as by precept the absolute necessity of co-operation. Egotism,
therefore, has no tendency to dissolve society as a mere organisation,
though it has utterly destroyed society as a source of pleasure."
"Does your law," I asked, "confine the principle of euthanasia to
infants, or do you put out of the world adults whose life is supposed,
for one reason or another, to be useless and joyless?"
"Only," he answered, "in the case of the insane. When the doctors are
satisfied that a lunatic cannot be cured, an inquest is held; and if
the medical verdict be approved, he is quietly and painlessly
dismissed from existence.
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