As far as I know, none but the votaries of monotheistic, that is to
say, Jewish religions, look upon suicide as a crime. This is all the
more striking, inasmuch as neither in the Old nor in the New Testament
is there to be found any prohibition or positive disapproval of it;
so that religious teachers are forced to base their condemnation of
suicide on philosophical grounds of their own invention. These are
so very bad that writers of this kind endeavor to make up for the
weakness of their arguments by the strong terms in which they express
their abhorrence of the practice; in other words, they declaim against
it. They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that
only a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of the
same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is
_wrong_; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world
to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life
and person.
Suicide, as I have said, is actually accounted a crime; and a crime
which, especially under the vulgar bigotry that prevails in England,
is followed by an ignominious burial and the seizure of the man's
property; and for that reason, in a case of suicide, the jury almost
always brings in a verdict of insanity. Now let the reader's own moral
feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal act. Think
of the impression that would be made upon you by the news that some
one you know had committed the crime, say, of murder or theft, or been
guilty of some act of cruelty or deception; and compare it with your
feelings when you hear that he has met a voluntary death. While in the
one case a lively sense of indignation and extreme resentment will be
aroused, and you will call loudly for punishment or revenge, in the
other you will be moved to grief and sympathy; and mingled with your
thoughts will be admiration for his courage, rather than the moral
disapproval which follows upon a wicked action. Who has not had
acquaintances, friends, relations, who of their own free will have
left this world; and are these to be thought of with horror as
criminals? Most emphatically, No! I am rather of opinion that the
clergy should be challenged to explain what right they have to go into
the pulpit, or take up their pens, and stamp as a crime an action
which many men whom we hold in affection and honor have committed;
and to refuse an honorable burial to those who relinquish this
world voluntarily. They have no Biblical authority to boast of,
as justifying their condemnation of suicide; nay, not even any
philosophical arguments that will hold water; and it must be
understood that it is arguments we want, and that we will not be put
off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal law forbids
suicide, that is not an argument valid in the Church; and besides, the
prohibition is ridiculous; for what penalty can frighten a man who is
not afraid of death itself? If the law punishes people for trying
to commit suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the
attempt a failure.
The ancients, moreover, were very far from regarding the matter in
that light. Pliny says: _Life is not so desirable a thing as to be
protracted at any cost. Whoever you are, you are sure to die, even
though your life has been full of abomination and crime. The chief
of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the
blessings which Nature gives to man, there is none greater than an
opportune death; and the best of it is that every one can avail
himself of it.[1]_ And elsewhere the same writer declares: _Not even
to God are all things possible; for he could not compass his own
death, if he willed to die, and yet in all the miseries of our earthly
life, this is the best of his gifts to man.[2]_ Nay, in Massilia
and on the isle of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons
for relinquishing his life, was handed the cup of hemlock by the
magistrate; and that, too, in public.[3] And in ancient times, how
many heroes and wise men died a voluntary death. Aristotle,[4] it is
true, declared suicide to be an offence against the State, although
not against the person; but in Stobaeus' exposition of the Peripatetic
philosophy there is the following remark: _The good man should flee
life when his misfortunes become too great; the bad man, also, when
he is too prosperous_. And similarly: _So he will marry and beget
children and take part in the affairs of the State, and, generally,
practice virtue and continue to live; and then, again, if need be,
and at any time necessity compels him, he will depart to his place of
refuge in the tomb.[5]_ And we find that the Stoics actually praised
suicide as a noble and heroic action, as hundreds of passages show;
above all in the works of Seneca, who expresses the strongest approval
of it. As is well known, the Hindoos look upon suicide as a religious
act, especially when it takes the form of self-immolation by widows;
but also when it consists in casting oneself under the wheels of the
chariot of the god at Juggernaut, or being eaten by crocodiles in the
Ganges, or being drowned in the holy tanks in the temples, and so on.
The same thing occurs on the stage--that mirror of life. For example,
in _L'Orphelin de la Chine_[6] a celebrated Chinese play, almost
all the noble characters end by suicide; without the slightest hint
anywhere, or any impression being produced on the spectator, that
they are committing a crime. And in our own theatre it is much the
same--Palmira, for instance, in _Mahomet_, or Mortimer in _Maria
Stuart_, Othello, Countess Terzky.[7] Is Hamlet's monologue the
meditation of a criminal? He merely declares that if we had any
certainty of being annihilated by it, death would be infinitely
preferable to the world as it is. But _there lies the rub_!
[Footnote 1: Hist. Nat. Lib. xxviii., 1.]
[Footnote 2: Loc. cit. Lib. ii. c. 7.]
[Footnote 3: 3 Valerius Maximus; hist. Lib. ii., c. 6, § 7 et 8.
Heraclides Ponticus; fragmenta de rebus publicis, ix. Aeliani variae
historiae, iii., 37. Strabo; Lib. x., c. 5, 6.]
[Footnote 4: _Eth. Nichom_., v. 15.]
[Footnote 5: Stobaeus. _Ecl. Eth_.. ii., c. 7, pp. 286, 312]
[Footnote 6: Traduit par St. Julien, 1834.]
[Footnote 7: _Translator's Note_.--Palmira: a female slave in Goethe's
play of _Mahomet_. Mortimer: a would-be lover and rescuer of Mary in
Schiller's _Maria Stuart_. Countess Terzky: a leading character in
Schiller's _Wallenstein's Tod_.]
The reasons advanced against suicide by the clergy of monotheistic,
that is to say, Jewish religions, and by those philosophers who adapt
themselves thereto, are weak sophisms which can easily be refuted.[1]
The most thorough-going refutation of them is given by Hume in his
_Essay on Suicide_. This did not appear until after his death, when
it was immediately suppressed, owing to the scandalous bigotry and
outrageous ecclesiastical tyranny that prevailed in England; and hence
only a very few copies of it were sold under cover of secrecy and at a
high price. This and another treatise by that great man have come to
us from Basle, and we may be thankful for the reprint.[2] It is a
great disgrace to the English nation that a purely philosophical
treatise, which, proceeding from one of the first thinkers and writers
in England, aimed at refuting the current arguments against suicide
by the light of cold reason, should be forced to sneak about in that
country, as though it were some rascally production, until at last it
found refuge on the Continent. At the same time it shows what a good
conscience the Church has in such matters.
[Footnote 1: See my treatise on the _Foundation of Morals_, § 5.]
[Footnote 2: _Essays on Suicide_ and the _Immortality of the Soul_, by
the late David Hume, Basle, 1799, sold by James Decker.]
In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason existing
against suicide on the score of mortality. It is this: that suicide
thwarts the attainment of the highest moral aim by the fact that, for
a real release from this world of misery, it substitutes one that is
merely apparent. But from a _mistake_ to a _crime_ is a far cry; and
it is as a crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard
suicide.
The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering--_the
Cross_--is the real end and object of life. Hence Christianity
condemns suicide as thwarting this end; whilst the ancient world,
taking a lower point of view, held it in approval, nay, in honor.[1]
But if that is to be accounted a valid reason against suicide, it
involves the recognition of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid
only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted
by moral philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high standpoint,
there is no tenable reason left, on the score of morality, for
condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and zeal with which the
clergy of monotheistic religions attack suicide is not supported
either by any passages in the Bible or by any considerations of
weight; so that it looks as though they must have some secret reason
for their contention. May it not be this--that the voluntary surrender
of life is a bad compliment for him who said that _all things were
very good_? If this is so, it offers another instance of the crass
optimism of these religions,--denouncing suicide to escape being
denounced by it.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer refers to _Die Welt
als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. i., § 69, where the reader may find
the same argument stated at somewhat greater length. According to
Schopenhauer, moral freedom--the highest ethical aim--is to be
obtained only by a denial of the will to live. Far from being a
denial, suicide is an emphatic assertion of this will. For it is in
fleeing from the pleasures, not from the sufferings of life, that this
denial consists. When a man destroys his existence as an individual,
he is not by any means destroying his will to live. On the contrary,
he would like to live if he could do so with satisfaction to himself;
if he could assert his will against the power of circumstance; but
circumstance is too strong for him.]
It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of life reach
the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will
put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable
resistance; they stand like a sentinel at the gate leading out of this
world. Perhaps there is no man alive who would not have already put an
end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative character,
a sudden stoppage of existence. There is something positive about
it; it is the destruction of the body; and a man shrinks from that,
because his body is the manifestation of the will to live.
However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard
as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the
antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If
we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time, we become
indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In
the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily
pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the other, it
distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a pause in mental
suffering. It is this feeling that makes suicide easy; for the bodily
pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one
who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering. This is especially
evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely
morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special effort to overcome their
feelings is necessary, nor do such people require to be worked up in
order to take the step; but as soon as the keeper into whose charge
they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring
their life to an end.
When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of
greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby banishing all the hideous
shapes that were born of the night. And life is a dream: when the
moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing
happens.
Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment--a question which man
puts to Nature, trying to force her to an answer. The question is
this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his
insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make;
for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts
the question and awaits the answer.