aggressor; though, being a raving maniac, he does not know what crime he
is committing, and is _formally_ innocent of murderous intent.
_Materially_ considered, the act is unjust, and I can defend myself
lawfully as against any other unjust assailant. Such is the common
teaching of moralists. But can the innocent babe be classed in the same
category with the raving maniac? Why should it? It is doing nothing; it
is merely passive in the whole process of parturition.

Will any one object that the infant has no right to be there at all? Who
put it there? The only human agents in the matter were its parents. The
mother is more accountable for the unfortunate situation than the child.
Certainly you could not, to save the child, directly kill the mother,
treating her as an unjust assailant of her child's life? Still less can
you treat the infant as an unjust assailant of its mother's life.

The plea of self-defence against unjust aggression being thus ruled out
of court in all such cases, and no other plea remaining for the
craniotomist, we have established, on the clearest principles of Ethics
and Jurisprudence, that it is never allowed directly to kill a child as
a means to save its mother's life. It would be a bad means, morally
evil; and no moral evil can ever be done that good may come of it; the
end cannot justify an evil means. In theory all good men agree with us
that the end can never justify the means. But in practice it seems to be
different with some of the medical profession. Of late, however, the
practice of craniotomy and all equivalent operations upon living
subjects has gone almost entirely out of fashion among the better class
of physicians.

Allow me, gentlemen, to conclude this lecture with the reading of two
extracts from articles of medical writers on the present state of