PARTISAN REVIEW
Or perhaps she remembered another kind of law according to
which it is wrong to disobey duly constituted authorities. An act of civil
disobedience violates the divine order in society, breaks the social con–
tract, and threatens society with disintegration into chaos and anarchy.
It follows that the individual members of society-the workmen
in the factories and fields, the merchants and craftsmen, the scientists
and the doctors-render their services, but the authorities decide how
and to what end to dispose of them. Thus it came to pass, once upon a
time, but still in our time and memory, that the individual members of
society became ever more highly accomplished in their skills and services:
the technicians became ever more technically perfect, and the specialists
ever more technically specialized until they could fashion gadgets not
even dreamed of in the ages of barbarism and until they could practice
the most subtle and difficult arts on the human body. But they had
to surrender their ingenuity and artifacts to the duly constituted author–
ities. For theirs was not to be free to dispose of the things of their own
making. Theirs was to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's.
Perhaps the Roumanian woman doctor remembered this ancient law
and divine
deere~,
and was right in serving those who had killed her
husband, son, and parents; for she was only a specialist in the art of
healing.
8
But, alas, between the idea and the reality falls a shadow. What was
intended to serve the cause of health and life only served the cause of
death.
The Roumanian woman doctor was alive only because she prac–
ticed an art which was useful to an economy of death. Workers and
slaves-like tools and machines-must be oiled and greased, must be
patched up and doctored in order to function with maximum efficiency
and yield. Thus the doctor's art of healing only served the purpose of
keeping human machines running at maximum speed in the factories of
death. But a woman does not function well when she is with child. Like
the aged, the young, or the sick, she becomes a burden, a liability to the
economy of the ghettoes and dungeons, a mouth which needs extra feed–
ing, a body which ·must be clothed and housed without being able to
render any service for the privilege of being alive. Thus, according to
the law of the market place, her life becomes worthless at the very mo–
ment when she fulfills her biological function of giving new life to the
world of man.
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