Sometimes one’s creed points logically where one is intuitively reluctant to go. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. Item: we should not give money to women begging with babies as this only encourages them. Item: this is a beggar and she is carrying a baby. Conclusion: …er …fumble in pockets for change. (She just looked so wretched.)
One settles such conflicts by following a hunch. This is not necessarily the triumph of unreason. We should never question the primacy of reason, but we cannot always be sure what reason dictates. Sometimes the heart may guess early at reasons which the brain proves slower to recognise. Sound argument should be paramount, yes, but sometimes intuition is early warning of an argument that is not as sound as it seems.
And so it happened that, libertarian to my boots, I thought I would be in favour of what euthanasia campaigners call the Right to Die until this week BBC 1’s The Morning Show asked me do a turn on their sofa to discuss Mr Reginald Crew’s plan (he is now the late Mr Reginald Crew) to travel to Switzerland where he could be assisted to kill himself. Mr Crew, who was 74, had been suffering for four years from motor neurone disease; there was no cure, his deterioration was remorseless, and life had become (he said) no longer worth living.
An action which causes another person’s death, even at his request, is unlawful in Switzerland as it is here, but the Swiss have been more flexible in their prosecution policy and tend to turn a blind eye to the work of reputable and humane organisations such as Dignitas, the group that assisted Mr Crew by giving him poison to drink through a straw.
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