I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or not. If it
is, then there must be, on the average, more trouble, more sorrow, more
failure, and, consequently, more people are driven to despair. In
civilized life there is a great struggle, great competition, and many
fall. To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the
country a man has friends. He can get a little credit, a little help,
but in the city it is different. The man is lost in the multitude. In
the roar of the streets his cry is not heard. Death becomes his only
friend. Death promises release from want, from hunger and pain, and so
the poor wretch lays down his burden, dashes it from his shoulders and
falls asleep.
To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so many endure
and suffer to the natural end, that so many nurse the spark of life in
huts and prisons, keep it and guard it through years of misery and
want; support it by beggary; by eating the crust found in the gutter,
and to whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and
dread. Why should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all he had, the
loved ones dead, friends lost, seek to lengthen, to preserve his life?
What can the future have for him?
Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself. When life
is of no value to him, when he can be of no real assistance to others,
why should a man continue? When he is of no benefit, when he is a
burden to those he loves, why should he remain? The old idea was that
"God" made us and placed us here for a purpose, and that it was our
duty to remain until He called us. The world is outgrowing this
absurdity. What pleasure can it give "God" to see a man devoured by a
cancer? To see the quivering flesh slowly eaten? To see the nerves
throbbing with pain? Is this a festival for "God"? Why should the
poor wretch stay and suffer? A little morphine would give him
sleep--the agony would be forgotten and he would pass unconsciously
from happy dreams to painless death.
If "God" determines all births and deaths, of what use is medicine, and
why should doctors defy, with pills and powders, the decrees of "God"?
No one, except a few insane, act now according to this childish
superstition. Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of
a burning building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a
bullet through his brain or a dagger in his heart? Would it give "God"
pleasure to see him burn? When did the man lose the right of
self-defense?
So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and
ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why
should he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of
others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears?
Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life hesitate to still
his heart? The grave is better than the cell. Sleep is sweeter than
the ache of toil. The dead have no masters.
So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of home closed
against her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that will help, no
eye that will soften with pity, the future an abyss filled with
monstrous shapes of dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of
thoughts like clouds broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the
serpents of remorse, flying from horrors too great to bear, rushes with
joy through the welcome door of death.
Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable
suicide--cases in which not to end life would be a mistake, sometimes
almost a crime.
As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself. And if a
man honestly decides that death is best--best for him and others--and
acts upon the decision, why should he be blamed?
Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical coward. He may
have lacked moral courage, but not physical. It may be said that some
men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between
two fires--the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they
take the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were, according to
their belief, between two fires--the flames of the fagot that could
burn but for a few moments and the fires of God, that were eternal.
And they chose the flames of the fagot.
Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and
pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the
suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or
that Seneca was. Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for. Cato
was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of
others who felt that they had reached the end--that the journey was
done, the voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain
that the man who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops all
other deeds, that shackles accident and bolts up change," is not
lacking in physical courage.
If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses,
in hospitals, they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the
stains of dishonor, they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this can
be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."
Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He
knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom of
every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he
allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said, "There
is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits
innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in
which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death."
To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.
Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not
only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became
outcasts. If, however, they died before conviction, their children
were saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly
they were not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes, they had
enough of honor, of manhood, left to save their innocent children.
This was not cowardice.
Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their
property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose
proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of
frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in
heart--the light fading from their lives--seek the refuge of death.
Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways--who mangle their
throats with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take
poisons that torture like the rack--such persons must be insane. But
those who take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and
against, and who decide that death is best--the only good--and then
resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full
possession of their minds.
Life is not the same to all--to some a blessing, to some a curse, to
some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
with the keenest joy, and some with indifference.
Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number
of suicides. The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay
the hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by
natural death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will
cause such believers to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is
no fear of the future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep,
men have less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other hand,
orthodox religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused
parents to murder their children and many thousands to destroy
themselves and others.
It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill
themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is
forgotten, "God" and hell are out of their minds. I am satisfied that
many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of
insanity, and many are perfectly sane.
The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is
cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful
suicides. When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so
persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man? A man
seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take
extra pains and precautions to make death certain.
This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and
enforced by ignorance and cruelty.
When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk
and narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of
death, why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?
Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take
gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my
estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world.
People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for
other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys,
our sufferings and our duties are here. The law of New York about the
attempt to commit suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal.
Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who have lost all
fear of death, care nothing for law and its penalties. Death is
liberty, absolute and eternal.
We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of every
suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and
efficient cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts
touch each other. There is no space between--no room for chance.
Given a certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the
necessary result. If we wish to prevent suicide we must change
conditions. We must, by education, by invention, by art, by
civilization, add to the value of the average life. We must cultivate
the brain and heart--do away with false pride and false modesty. We
must become generous enough to help our fellows without degrading them.
We must make industry useful work of all kinds--honorable. We must
mingle a little affection with our charity--a little fellowship. We
should allow those who have sinned to really reform. We should not
think only of what the wicked have done, but we should think of what we
have wanted to do. People do not hate the sick. Why should they
despise the mentally weak--the diseased in brain?
Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances--of
conditions--and we do as we must. This great truth should till the
heart with pity for the failures of our race.
Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce the suicide; that in
old times they buried him where the roads crossed, and drove a stake
through his body. They took his property from his children and gave it
to the State.
If Christians would only think, they would see the orthodox religion
rests upon suicide--that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without
suicide the whole world would have been lost.
If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the
Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed
them to take his life.
If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death
with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not
say that he committed suicide?
There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God and allowed the Jews
to kill Him, then He consented to His own death--refused, though
perfectly able, to defend and protect Himself, and was, in fact, a
suicide.
We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. As long as there
shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and
women will untie life's knot and seeks the peace of death.
To the hopelessly imprisoned--to the dishonored and despised--to those
who have failed, who have no future, no hope--to the abandoned, the
broken-hearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and
women--how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!
And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome deliverer.
Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed
long--when we are weary--when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk,
for the cool kisses of the night--when the senses are dull--when the
pulse is faint and low--when the mists gather on the mirror of
memory--when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly
perceived--when the future has but empty hands--death is as welcome as
a strain of music.
After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal
happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by
no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and
forever.
The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in
spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger
and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that
so few of the miserable are brave enough to die--that so many are
terrified by the "something after death"--by the specters and phantoms
of superstition.
Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic
snows--how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea--how they
linger in famine--how they fight disaster and despair! On the
crumbling edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last
full of hope and courage.
But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are
disheartened by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and
give the earth their blood.
They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or
blame--we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.
One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming
and loving daughter, committed suicide. He was a man of generous
impulses. His heart was loving and tender. He was conscientious, and
so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he
thought wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let us be
merciful in our judgments.
All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the
malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the
ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances
and conditions sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in
passion's storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of
insanity--raise their hands against themselves and desperately put out
the light of life.
Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If they are insane
they should, if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be
reasoned with, calmed and assisted.
Ingersoll's Letter, The Right to One's Life Colonel Ingersoll's
Eloquent Reply to His Critics
In the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that
"under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."
This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and the
writers of letters. These people contend that the right of
self-destruction does not and can not exist. They insist that life is
the gift of God, and that He only has the right to end the days of men;
that it is our duty to beat the sorrows that He sends with grateful
patience. Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes--worse
than the murder of another.
The first question, then, is:
Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?
A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer--his agony is intense--his
suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is slowly being taken.
Is this the work of the good God? Did the compassionate God create the
cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim?
This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of
no use to himself. His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no
use to his wife, his children, his friends or society. Day after day
he is rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the
brain to sleep. Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it
proper for him to take refuge in sleep?
If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes pleasure in the
sufferings of men--that He gloats over the agonies of His children. If
there be a good God, He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the
evils of life.
So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer--a burden to himself
and others, useless in every way--has the right to end his pain and
pass through happy sleep to dreamless rest.
But those who have answered me would say to this man: "It is your
duty to be devoured. The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is
the gift of God. You hold it in trust, and you have no right to end
it. The cancer is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it
with food."
Take another case: A man is on a burning ship; the crew and the rest
of the passengers have escaped--gone in the lifeboats--and he is left
alone. In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help. He
cannot swim. If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the
ship he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.
Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no
circumstances a man has the right to take his life, would say to this
man on the deck, "Remain where you are. It is the desire of your
loving, heavenly father that you be clothed in flame--that you slowly
roast--that your eyes be scorched to blindness and that you die insane
with pain. Your life is not your own, only the agony is yours."
I would say to this man: "Do as you wish. If you prefer drowning to
burning, leap into the sea. Between inevitable evils you have the
right of choice. You can help no one, not even God, by allowing
yourself to be burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by
choosing the easier death."
Let us suppose another case.
A man has been captured by savages in central Africa. He is about to
be tortured to death. His captors are going to thrust splinters of
pure into his flesh and then set them on fire. He watches them as they
make the preparations. He knows what they are about to do and what he
is about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, of help. He has a
vial of poison. He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass
beyond their power, leaving to them only the dead body.
Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it until
the savages by torture take it? Are the savages the agents of the good
God? Are they the servants of the infinite? Is it the duty of this
man to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has he no
right to defend himself? Is it the will of God that he die by torture?
What would any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this? Is
there room for discussion?
If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped
the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another
world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?
Suppose another case. In the good old days, when the inquisition
flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends,
many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of
pain.
Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man
who had been convicted of heresy, "lay him upon the floor of a dungeon,
secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten trim to the earth so that
he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his
stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his
body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking
food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.
Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture had within his hand
a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one
quick stroke he found the protection of death?
To this question there can be but one answer.
In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have
the right to destroy himself. It does not seem possible that the man
was under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the
ship and perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to
death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the
church.
If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take
their lives, then I was right when I said that "under many
circumstances a man has a right to kill himself."
Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical
cowards. They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their
misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the
dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not
and cannot be a physical coward.
The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and
when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die,
no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist.
The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the
very thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.
So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a
coward, but a reasonable man. It must be admitted that the suicide is
honest with himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one.
Certainly there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no
physical cowardice.
Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer
a coward?
Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is
the man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages
or "Christians" a coward?
Third, I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that they
acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession of
their minds.
Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right to take his
life, and if, under such circumstances, he does take his life, then it
cannot be said that he was insane.
Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground
that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it is
the greatest of crimes. Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must
have been sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal
admit that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is incapable
of committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who
have passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that
assertion admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.
They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have
committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."
It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to
be true: First, that under some circumstances a man has the right to
take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a
physical coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide were
at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.
Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the
foundation of the Christian religion.
I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power to protect
Himself without injuring His assailants--that having that power it was
His duty to use it, and that failing to use it He consented to His own
death and was guilty of suicide. To this the clergy answer that it was
self-sacrifice for the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for
the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and atonement are
born of a belief in the "fall of man," on account of the sins of our
"first parents," and of the declaration that "without the shedding of
blood there is no remission of sin." The foundation has crumbled. No
intelligent person now believes in the "fall of man"--that our first
parents were perfect, and that their descendants grew worse and worse,
at least until the coming of Christ.
Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of
history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage,
whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and
delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not
all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the
home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries of
suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery,
invention, self-sacrifice and thought.
Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest. The
idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of
sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and
scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death that
He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the
consequences of His own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and
natural brain.
In no mythology can anything more monstrously Unbelievable be found.
But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of His times because
it was cruel and absurd; if He endeavored to found a religion of
kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and
ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what He believed to be right and
true; He suffered death, then He was a noble man--a benefactor of His
race. But if He were God there was no need of this. The Jews did not
wish to kill God. If He had only made himself known, all knees would
have touched the ground. If He were God it required no heroism to die.
He knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of
eternal life. If He were God, there was no self-sacrifice. He had no
need to suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.
Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from
these conclusions--from these arguments--and so, instead of attacking
the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.
Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to commit
suicide a crime.
It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately
longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished--helped rather
than imprisoned.
A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman
without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with
tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night
leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of death.
She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the
authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb
and locked in a felon's cell.
To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages
would enforce.
Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several
centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good
thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the
hour of death. They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the
great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy,
surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the
thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last
agonies of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly
passes from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into
his last sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded
banks, reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the
bravest, one of the noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled
as a star that meets the morning.
At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer
could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could
smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed meet him in
heaven.
But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the
creed of the church in power could not die in peace. God would see to
it that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of
fear--that with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse,
the cry for pardon.
This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering
me, declare that the atheists, the free-thinkers, have no fear of
death--that to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience,
they gladly and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said
that infidels believe that death is the end--that it is a dreamless
sleep--that it is without pain--that therefore they have no fear, care
nothing for gods or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the
pulpit, nothing for the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a
burden they carelessly throw it down.
The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide. This
certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having forced
the clergy to contradict themselves.
Seventh, the clergy take the position that the atheist, the unbeliever,
has no standard of morality--that he can have no real conception of
right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one
to be moral or good unless he believes in some being far above himself.
In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he
believes in some being superior to himself.
What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will
increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least.
Happiness, in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which
increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral--that which
decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.
It is not hard for an atheist--for an unbeliever--to keep his hands out
of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his
well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.
So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence--so
far as what he considers his own good is concerned. Sometimes he is
swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance, but when he is really
intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for
him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for
him is good for others--for all the world.
It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is
necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong. Every man who
has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to
give the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis
of all morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this world,
of the experience, the intelligence of mankind. Morality is not of
supernatural origin. It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no
belief in the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no
supernatural heavens or hells to give it force and life. Subjects who
are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves.
They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong.
They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by
rewards, by alms.
Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder was just as
criminal before as after the promulgation of the ten commandments.
Eighth, many of the clergy, some editors and some writers of letters
who have answered me have said that suicide is the worst of crimes,
that a man had better murder somebody else than himself. One clergyman
gives as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in an act of
sin, and therefore he had better kill another person. Probably he
would commit a less crime if he would murder his wife or mother.
I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in sin. To say
that it is not as wicked to murder another as yourself seems absurd.
The man about to kill himself wishes to die. Why is it better for him
to kill another man, who wishes to live?
To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than
another. Better be a spendthrift than thief. Better throw away your
own money than steal the money of another. Better kill yourself if you
wish to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.
The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is one of the
greatest possible crimes to rush into His presence. It is wonderful
how much they know about God and how little about their fellow-men.
Wonderful the amount of their information about other worlds and how
limited their knowledge is of this.
There may or may not be an infinite being. I neither affirm nor deny.
I am honest enough to say that I do not know. I am candid enough to
admit that the question is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I
think I know as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever
knew, and that is--nothing.
I do not say that there is not another world, another life; neither do
I say that there is. I say that I do not know. It seems to me that
every sane and honest man must say the same. But if there is an
infinitely good God and another world, then the infinitely good God
will be just as good to us in that world as he is in this. If this
infinitely good God loves His children in this world, He will love them
in another. If He loves a man when he is alive, He will not hate him
the instant he is dead. If we are the children of an infinitely wise
and powerful God, He knew exactly what we would do--the temptations
that we could and could not withstand--knew exactly the effect that
everything would have upon us, knew under what circumstances we would
take our lives--and produced such circumstances himself. It is
perfectly apparent that there are many people incapable by nature of
bearing the burdens of life, incapable or preserving their mental poise
in stress and strain of disaster, disease and loss, and who by failure,
by misfortune and want, are driven to despair and insanity, in whose
darkened minds there comes like a flash of lightning in the night, the
thought of death, a thought so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost,
all ties broken, all duties, all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and
naught remains except a fierce and wild desire to die. Thousands and
thousands become moody, melancholy, brood upon loss of money, of
position, of friends, until reason abdicates, and frenzy takes
possession of the soul. If there be an infinitely wise and powerful
God, all this was known to Him from the beginning, and He so created
things, established relations, put in operation causes and effects that
all that has happened was the necessary result of his own acts.
Ninth, nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been
exceeding careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I
never uttered. They have declared that I have advised people who were
in trouble, somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told men
who have lost their money, who had failed in business, who were not
good in health, to kill themselves at once, without taking into
consideration any duty that they owed to wives, children, friends, or
society.
No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is
able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can
possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he
loves, as long as he can stand between wife and misery, between child
and want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty to remain.
I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny side of things,
in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in struggling against
adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter even in disaster, in having
confidence in tomorrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints
and shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even evil things
to good. I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage and
good-nature.
Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the world, of all
that live. My anxieties are about this life, this world. About the
phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no
fear.
The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I wait. The
immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor deny. I hope, hope for
all of the children of men. I have never denied the existence of
another world, nor the immortality of the soul. For many years I have
said that the idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed
in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating
against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any
book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human
affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and
clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.
After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong. People do not
kill themselves on the advice of friends or enemies. All wish to be
happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for
friends, and as long as life gives joy the idea of self-destruction
never enters the human mind.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others,
the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point,
the ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal
pain; these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the
helpless down to death.
It will not do to say that "God" has appointed a time for each to die.
Of this there is, and there can be, no evidence. There is no evidence
that any god takes any interest in the affairs of men--that any sides
with the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues the
oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God, through all ages, has
allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and
murdered by His enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of
prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who sends plague,
pestilence and famine? Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano
to overwhelm?
Tenth, again I say that it is wonderful to me that so many men, so many
women endure and carry their burdens to the natural end; that so many,
in spite of "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands the
spark of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last;
that the helpless wretches in poor-houses and asylums cling to life;
that the exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains, scarred with the knout,
live on; that the incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for
whom the future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp
of death.
It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short
journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon,
the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what
he cannot bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of
madness or in the calm of thought and choice the beleaguered soul finds
the serenity of death.
Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We know nothing of any
realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end of
life. Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the
suffering, the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by
grief and shame, by misery and want, by chance and fate until their
only friend is death.