can be urged to justify acts which God forbids by the natural law.[1]
When necessity is used as a synonym for a "very strong reason," as it
is in the plea of the craniotomist, then it is utterly false that very
strong reasons for doing an act cannot be set aside by a divine law to
the contrary; what is wrong in itself can never become right, even
though the strongest arguments could be adduced in its favor. It would
be doing wrong that good may come of it, or making the end justify the
means. Such principles may be found in the code of tyrants and
criminals, but should not be looked for in the code of Medical
Jurisprudence.

[1] See this point more fully treated in the Author's "Moral
Philosophy," Book. I. c. ii., "The Morality of Human Acts."

There is but one plea left, I believe, on which, of late years, it is
sometimes attempted to justify the murder of little children. It is the
plea of some evolutionists who maintain that the infant has not yet a
true human soul. I should not deign to consider this theory if it were
not that I find it seriously treated by a contributor to the "Medical
Record," in an article which, on September 4, 1895, concluded a long
discussion on craniotomy published in that learned periodical.

The writer of this article asserts: "Procuring the death of the foetus to
save the life of the mother is, I am sure, to be defended on ethical
grounds." And here is the way he attempts to defend it: "We may safely
assume," he argues, "that the theory of evolution is the best working
hypothesis in every branch of natural science. We are learning through
Herbert Spencer and all late writers on ethics and politics, that the
same principle will best explain the facts" (p. 395).

I do not deny that a certain school of scientists is trying to rewrite
all history and all Ethics and Jurisprudence. But the writer strangely
misstates the case when he says that "all great writers on ethics and
politics" agree with Mr. Spencer. Besides a multitude of others, Lord
Salisbury for one, has clearly shown of late that the school of agnostic
evolutionists is coming to grief; it has had its short day, and it is
now setting below the horizon of ignominy and subsequent oblivion. The
writer of the article in question does not attempt to prove the
evolution theory; therefore I need not stop to disprove it. But he makes
the following application of it to our subject--an application so
shocking to humanity and so revoltin