IS SOCIETY REVERTING TO SAVAGERY ?

New Zealand Tablet, 14 April 1921, Page 17

IS SOCIETY REVERTING TO SAVAGERY ?

(By Joseph Husslein, S.J., in America.) The African explorer Stanley relates the story how in passing through a jungle with a troop of natives, a lion suddenly leaped out of the thickets and pounced on one of his men. Before the event was fully realised the agile and powerful brute had dragged away its booty and disappeared in the forest. The effect upon the ebony group of savages, when the first shock of surprise had passed, was a wild outbreak of uncontrolled and most hilarious merriment. Spasms of uproarious laughter made all pursuit impossible. The incident, as viewed by these dusky children of the wilderness, was merely "a good joke on somebody.” The loss of a human life made no impression. It conveyed no sense of solemnity or seriousness. There was no sympathy for the unhappy victim. Thousands of others, such as he, might be found anywhere among the straw-built huts beneath the clusters of tall cocoa-nut trees. Then, why worry? There is another incident that somehow remains pictured in the writer’s memory. It is a tale of the early discoverers of the American continent, who, as they landed near an Indian settlement, came upon a stolid brave dragging a woman by the hair. She was only a squaw of whom he had grown tired and he was then about to dispatch her with his battle-axe. It was a matter of no particular moment for him, just a simpler and more final proceeding than a modern divorce act. Is this disregard for human life to be ascribed to the age of savagery, which sociologists have been pleased to catalogue as the primitive form of human society ? Most certainly not. Among the. highest material developments of so-called social evolution must certainty be reckoned the civilisations of Greece and Rome. Yet we recall how in a war between Greek cities the captured children of the enemy were deliberately enclosed in a barn and infuriated 'bulls driven in upon them to gore and trample them to death, as grapes were crushed beneath - the vintner’s feet. Human life, as such, counted for - nothing among the Greeks and Romans. The fate of their slaves is but too familiar to us, and we have not forgotten the bloody games in the amphitheatre, witnessed with equal relish by the noble dames of fashion and the dissolute rabble.

Five Physicians and a Polynesian Custom.

But if Greece and Rome failed to rise above the stage of savagery in their disregard for human life, has our boasted age of progress, so far as it may be called the product of materialistic education, advanced any higher? The. practices of our "best society” would hardly justify us in saying so. Life was never considered less sacred than in our day. We need not here refer to the terrible records of crime, to the lavish notoriety given to it in our daily press, to the recklessness with which princes, statesmen, generals, and proletarian leaders use men as pawns upon the chess-board of their ambitious plans and imperialistic designs. It suffices to take a glance into the modern, materialistic school and home. The first instance that naturally comes to mind at the present writing is the resignation of five physicians from the faculty of the Marquette University Medical School because hampered in their academic freedom to teach the gentle^ art of murder under the scientific name of "craniotomy. The fact that this is freely taught in hundreds o* rationalistic classrooms is taken to be sufficient evidence of its respectability. Yet no amount *of sophistry can disguise the fact that the direct killing of an innocent unborn child, for whatever reason, is murder pure and simple. It implies the assumption of Divine power over life and death. The belief in the necessity of this practice, we are told, is a medical superstition, yet even were 1 this not so, no ■ argument for its -utility, in the mother’s interest. could excuse the directly willed action of infanticide, which differs from no other kind of murder, except in its greater heinousness. Personal interest is the" only reason given by the Polynesian savage for his highly respected custom of--sacrificing a human being at the erection of a new habitation. In their disregard for the prime interests and; the right to life of the human creatures slain by them in cold blood the Polynesian savage and the rationalistic physician are on the .same, moral level. No" interests ofi a third party can excuse'these deeds, or else all murder must be justified. .jm. Our - “Best Society” and the Maori Tribes. . ’ Yet if the instruction given in our materialistic schools is correct, there 'can •be no escape from the logic which justifies these actions, as well as, such other criminal prac-

tices/ as abortion, euthanasia, and . the killing . of . the , weak and defective. Such acts do not differ essentially. from the offences against human life on the part of the criminal sensualist, the anarchist, the imperialist, the adulterator Oi food,. and scores, of ■ other, products of our enlightened civilisation. If there ' is no God in heaven, why ■ should not human life be freely prevented, shortened, or violently cut off at the pleasure, profit, or assumed utility of those in control of the situation especially when the . practice of murder can be rendered so safe as in the case of the unconscionable physician who plays the Moloch part for the pagan mother? v < ; ; ( , , ‘Female infanticide” is common among the heathen nations to-day. Children are drowned or exposed to death without compunction on the part of their parents, even as under the ancient paganism the Greek mother was hardened^ yield up her new-born babe at the husband’s wish. So in the civilised pagan world about us, birth-control and race-suicide flourish in every imaginable form, and have their public organs and their organised propaganda. The higher the materialistic culture, the greater the criminality with which human life is prevented or destroyed. Among the Maori savages a master would slay his slave as an act of bravado, just to add to his . own social prestige. The same moral code prevails in our “best society” and the criminal prevention or outright murder of innocent child-life is a sign of proper breeding. Just an Accident of Evolution. Artificial prevention of conception is a criminal crossing of God s creative will. But with the moment of conception itself human life has actually begun. Directly to destroy it, under whatever plea, is murder. Even to save our very lives, we may not kill an inoffensive person. Whatever the age of the latter, be it a minute or a century, the act remains essentially the same. . These facts are obvious to right reason. But admitting materialistic evolution evolution without'God as distinct from that in which He still remains the ultimate Creator and Giver of all laws in —there is then no more reason for acknowledging the sacredness of life in child or man than in the slimy snail or the stalled ox. If the doctrine taught in our rationalistic class-rooms and promulgated in our popular literature is true, the headhunting Philippine savage is as ethically correct in his favorite sport as the fox-hunting British squire in racing with his pack of hounds. There is then no difference between the human embryo and the jelly fish, between the adult man and the orangutan, except the mere accident of a somewhat more advanced stage of evolution, which surely can lend no iota of sacredness or inviolability to human life that is not possessed by other living creatures. A race of supermen and superwomen might then reas-onably'-deal with the less evolved humans as we now do with the supposedly less evolved brute. That is precisely the attitude of the modern pagan world. It is the attitude of the mother or physician who slays the less evolved but truly human being at any moment after its conception. It is the attitude of the already existing race of supermen and superwomen for whom the life of others counts for nothing, provided it can be made to advance their own , wealth, standing, projects and ambitions. It is the attitude of a whole modern literature. If therefore the teaching of our materialistic universities is correct, then to all these principles and practices we too must say, “Amen.” But, thank God! this is not the case. The Modern “Sun” Morality. “Suns” was the name given to the higher aristocracy among the Natchez. They were not as the common people, Dr. Lewie tells us, they were but as dirt beneath the feet of the high and worshipful “Suns,” At the death of any of the latter all his servants were doomed to die with him. At great public feasts numbers of slaves might be prodigally killed by the grand savage seigniors, just to offer an imposing display of the magnificent disregard with which they were able to destroy their privately owned possessions. Now if human, beings are but a product of materialistic evolution, remotely descended from a sea-worm and directly from an ape, as children are so wisely taught in our progressive materialistic schools,, and as Socialists and anarchists, together with university dons, insist upon repeating to make it true,, then, who could find fault, with the order of the highland worshipful "Suns” ! Let them sacrifice the lives of others just to enhance their own importance • in '-the social whirl ! It . is a deed not uncommon in our "best society” and ; Socialism has long been straining every nerve to make it common enough- also in the labor world. Our sociologists, historians, scientists, and philosophers are in great numbers , doing their own manly part to produce these supermen and superwomen. -’'Already^we have with r .us r “Sun” . mothers, .. "Sun” physicians, "Sun” militarists,. "Sun” imperialists, "Sun” pro-

fiteers, and - Sun. Bolsheviki. The taking of human lives is of no consequence to them. Animal and savage dances, the abolition 1 of modesty and the cult of nakedness, are still other expressions of this -same reversion of modern materialistic society to savage t types, though Christian traditions yet hold the world in check. Riches, material developments, and higher education are but a thin veneer upon the surface of civilisation. They cannot transform a paganised people, but merely serve for a time to gild the ugly truth. Without a , return to God, without ’religion in education, the reversion to savagery cannot be stayed. The World War was not its worst manifestation.