Or, put the case otherwise; without pretending to such a counsel of perfection as that he can love his enemies, a man may yet assert that human life is sacred, and that he has no right to take the life of his fellow. Having done so he begins to set up exceptions: "Though I may not do it at my own," he says, "I may do it at the bidding of others." And this not by orders that he is compelled into on pain of death or torture (when he might plead a natural human infirmity as his excuse for wrongdoing) but by voluntary enlistment in an army, or by voluntary acceptance of the post of public hangman, or of a judgeship, or of service upon a jury in cases involving the death-penalty.
Now, it may be very commendable to take human life at the bidding of others; but it is not consistent with the unqualified statement that "all human life is sacred." The one proposition—it is not my concern here to defend or attack either of them—becomes discredited by the other. The advocate of the judicial extinction of life under the institution of capital punishment, or of wholesale extinction under the institution of war—if he wishes to be heard as a credible witness, and to avoid the imputation of discreditable conduct when he gives a hand to it—must reshape his statement something after this manner: "Human life is so important a thing that one man must not take it on his own responsibility; but Society may." And then he will have to
