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 cannot 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 bear 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 quiverering 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 pine
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 him 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 to 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 freethinkers, 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_.--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 food 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 a 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 of
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
exceedingly 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 any 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 to-morrow, 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 poorhouses 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll.