Paul said to the Romans, "None liveth to himself, and no man dieth to
himself." In inflicting a wound upon himself, the suicide wounds all
there is, and his death shocks every living thing. That is so because of
the oneness, the solidarity, the interdependence of all that is. Hence
it is that the atom is as necessary to the universe as a world. It is a
very old philosophy, but it is a demonstrable cosmological and
psychological fact, for we know that man necessarily lives and moves and
has his being under the same law of growth and maintenance that supports
and sustains every other entity, even from the atom subdivided into a
million parts away to the mightiest god. It is just as incumbent upon
the bowlder that it fulfill its destiny as it is that man should fulfill
his. Hence, it is a violation of the law of being to purposely or
unnecessarily retard the unfoldment of one's self or any other thing.
The wrong done to the thing hindered reflects back upon the doer in
force, in addition to the injury done to that which was wronged.
The divinity which shapes the course of a man's journey through the
worlds of existence is his own thoughts and acts, and, furthermore,
every thought and act exerts an influence for good or for evil
everywhere. It is true, altogether true, that every man is more or less
his brother's keeper, and that no one can escape the consequences of his
acts and thoughts upon his own life, nor of the influence they exert
upon the lives of others. The interdependence of all things and the
universality of being is seen in all things. This is a principle of
existence which to know the full meaning of, one must know one's self.
Existence as a personality and individuality, with power to reason and
understand, is at once the most sublime and most fearful stage of
unfoldment. It is sublime when considered as evidence of individual
possibilities, and fearful when, in the presence of God in
manifestation, the responsibility which the realization of the
universality of being and the interdependence of all things imposed upon
the individual is felt. The law of being makes a relationship to exist
between individuals as a whole which transcends the ties of
consanguinity. You may call it universal brotherhood, if you like, but
any way, the relationship imposes tasks of toil and burdens of duty upon
everyone, and to wilfully make the burden of duty or the task of toil
harder for one's self or for another is to defy the power of the
universe and invite the wrath of the source and maintainer of being.
But somehow or some way the average man and woman finds in the so-called
philosophy of suicide a most bewitching theme for conversation and
discussion, and it is just possible that not a few are persuaded to try
the realities of it by letting their minds dwell upon the subject too
much. That there is a certain fascination in the problem of life and
death, no one will deny, but the thoughtful person would not seek its
solution in self-destruction. The better a man understands the law of
his being the clearer he sees that in ratio to his obedience to the laws
of nature is he in harmonious relation with all things, and that when in
such harmony, existence in the body is altogether desirable, whether he
be sick or well, rich or poor.
But what constitutes suicide or self-murder? We are accustomed to call
that an act of suicide which hurls one into death at once, when death
follows the act instantly. Now, as a matter of fact, we all are almost
sure to occupy a suicide's grave. There is a difference between the man
who burns out his stomach in twenty seconds with prussic acid and the
man who burns out his stomach in twenty years with whisky, but can you
tell me just what the difference is? That thought might be carried into
the conduct of our life throughout. The natural end of a man's
pilgrimage in each incarnation is when the spiritual man has so
spiritualized his physical body that the spirit can no longer function
in it.
Death, then, is surely the spirit walking out of the body by its own
free will, just as we lay aside a garment when it is worn out. All other
deaths come of violation of nature's laws, and they are premature. It is
because we indirectly, at least, commit what is almost the equivalent of
what we are wont to call suicide that, in my opinion, we have to come
back so often. It is impossible for disease and death, as we understand
and feel them, to lay hold upon one who lives in harmony with nature's
laws. So as a matter of fact, practically all deaths are the penalty for
wrong living. We come back time and again because we need certain other
experiences, but the purpose of experience is to teach us to live right,
and the reason why we need new experiences is because we have not
hitherto, or are not now, living in harmony with nature's laws. Karma
makes us go to school until we have mastered the lesson. It is for us to
say how many lives we will devote to it, but every moment we turn away
from the lesson we drink down poison which kills.
To seek death by one's own hand is not a new method to overcome the ills
that relentlessly chase their victims through briar patch and over flint
hill. It is a right that has been claimed by very many in all ages, and
some of the world's most distinguished personages committed self-murder
to escape impending trouble. The crime—for it is a crime—has been
defended by such famous writers as Gibbon, Hume, Von Hartman and
Schopenhauer. Strangely enough, as civilization advances and
universities multiply, the roll of self-murderers seems to increase. It
can not be said, therefore, that the spread of culture and knowledge, of
discoveries in the field of science, and the adoption of higher codes of
commercial and social ethics, educate or influence the world away from
the old-time philosophy that a man's highest right is to quit living by
his own hand when he is tired of life. Indeed, it would seem that the
wider the range of personal liberty, and the more extended the
opportunities for intellectual expansion and experiment, the incentive
to self-destruction is intensified.
At a recent meeting of the American Medico-Legal congress it was held by
not a few members that not only was suicide justifiable in cases where
there appeared to be no other way for one to relieve one's misery, but
that a physician would be justifiable in ending the life of his patient
under certain circumstances. I think we all will agree that such a
sentiment is unworthy of a manly man.
When a man assumes to be a law unto himself he is certain to come in
contact with forces which will sweep him out of the current of the river
of individual progress into whirls and eddies, which agitate the waters
fearfully but do not move onward. He will realize, too, that God, the
universe and himself are one stupendous whole—absolutely
inseparable—and that when he quits any sphere of existence by his own
act in violation of the law of his being he is still a necessary part of
the whole, and that in severing the cord of earthly life he not only
fails of his purpose, but he himself will feel the jar more severely
than any other entity in all the worlds of God, and not only so, but he
shall continue to live amid distracting discord until he voluntarily
readjusts himself to that system of law and harmony from which he
essayed unlawfully to break away. Certainly he will find pain and sorrow
in returning, but not to return is to be without rest eternally.
Nevertheless, all men appoint their time to die by their conduct of
life, which in nearly all cases is a form of suicide.
There are those who advocate suicide as a proper means of escape from
tiresome environment who deny that any unpleasant consequences could
follow, because there is no consciousness after death, but it is
incumbent upon them to prove that there is such a state as "death" in
the sense they speak of it. It would seem that if there is no
consciousness in what is called the state of the dead—if the memory of
man is annihilated by what is called death—it should be annihilated by
sleep or trance, for they are states in which the body is dead for the
time. Of course, the advocate of suicide fortifies his position by
denying that there is memory where there is no brain life and action,
and that when the brain ceases to be active, memory perishes, but that
theory is untenable, because the brain is entirely renewed every seven
years or such a matter. A man remembers incidents in his childhood,
although meanwhile his brain has changed completely a dozen times. It
must be, therefore, that there is something in man which is impervious
to the influences which time exerts over the physical body. The "tablets
of the memory" continue throughout. There is a natural body and there is
a spiritual body.
The advocate of suicide as the better way to rid one's self of trials
and tribulations is necessarily a materialist. He preaches the doctrine
of immortality of matter and the mortality of spirit, which is a
ridiculous absurdity. But he will discourse learnedly about the
milliards of bacilli—separate, distinct, individual, living
entities—which float about, live, move and have their being nearly
everywhere, but if he were asked to catch a few that they might be seen
and handled he would promptly say they were altogether invisible to the
naked eye, that they are almost sub-microscopic. He would admit that
these invisible creatures have existence under the same law that peoples
the forest with trees, the earth with animals, and the channels of
commerce with men, but he would not admit that any living thing could
have life separate from its visible organism; hence, when the physical
organism becomes ill, or is subjected to any other uncomfortable
conditions of existence, it is its right to escape by quitting life.
But materialists are too few and far between to bother with; besides,
there never was a materialist who did not hope that his philosophy was
in error, and that he should continue to live as an individual,
retaining memory and affections after what he calls death. Having that
hope he is deprived of the right to advocate suicide, because if he is
to live after the death of the body he must admit that he will be a
substantial, thinking being, for it is impossible to think of substance
without form, and of either without ascribing power to it.
But there is a phase of the philosophy of suicide which can be seen only
from the occult or metaphysical side of life. It has been said that it
is the cowardly and unmanly man who wilfully destroys his own life, but
for all that a great deal of mental strength and bravery may be required
to become too great a coward to combat even little annoyances. And
again, the psychological influences which gradually prepare a man during
the long days of a protracted illness to calmly, gladly no doubt,
welcome death as a friend come in the hour of need, may come with such
force upon the man contemplating self-slaughter that he is as much
nerved to meet death as he whose mental acquiescence came after weeks or
months of bodily pain and wasting away. The stoics knew of this occult
force which nerves a man to destroy his life, and they called it a
"sympathetic friend," but science has never been able to analyze or
define it, and hence we can know nothing of it except what we gather
from the lesson its effects upon the soul of man teaches. It is not
true, though, that the suicide leaps from darkness of despair here into
the bright light of peace and joy "over there."
The occult force which nerves a man to murder himself, the would-be
suicides should bear in mind, is not spent when the man dies. It is a
force which is also an immutable law, albeit the influence of its
operation is confined to the spiritual man. If it nerves a man to deal
with himself harshly it is because the free will of the man cannot be
disputed. Were it to paralyze his mind and cripple his purpose the man
would be little more than a human machine subject to the whims or
caprice of a force or power higher than he. It is the recognition of his
free agency by the eternal cause that makes a man a free moral agent,
but the same force that sustains him in the exercise of his rights as a
free agent follows him beyond the grave and all through the process of
unfoldment if he elects to progress, or through the process of
retrogression if he inclines to travel to the left.
In quitting this sphere or plane of existence the suicide by no means
escapes duty. The environment from which he fled must be met and
overcome, and in trying to escape he only strengthens the opposing
forces and weakens his own powers of resistance. Nevertheless, the
battle must be fought and the victory must be won if he would be free
from the hurtful influences which prompted him to avoid learning the
lesson of life, and whatever the environment is, it is to be overcome
for the good to him there is in the victory. This is the law of
compensation, and it is the law of all laws, for it commands that
whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
The suicide, therefore, not only fails to escape the ills he flees
from—but he intensifies the distress which burdens him. Moreover, no
occult or spiritual force ever influenced him to burden himself with the
consequences of hateful environment, but it aided in the exercise of his
free will. And, again, whatever a man's burden may be it is the harvest
of his own sowing. If it be of love and sweet memories it is his by
natural right, so also it is his by natural right if it be greed and
cowardice. The suicide runs from the presence of trouble to the arms of
many troubles, and the occult force that aids him in the exercise of his
free will holds him to account for committing self-murder with the same
firm hand of justice that it would had he murdered his neighbor instead
of himself. There is no escape from the consequences of one's acts. The
grave is no hiding place. It is the door rather which opens into a court
of justice beyond—into a place where the ethical debits and credits of
the individual await him that a balance may be struck. Those things
which he planted in the field of life will be there as debits and
credits. Nothing will be omitted, be they the fruit of omission or of
commission, and that which he owes he must come again into the field of
the activities of physical environment and pay to the uttermost
farthing. This, too, the law of Karma demands, and this it exacts.
THE ETHICS OF SEX.
BY GRACE G. BOHN.
"Simple? Why this is the old woe o' the world:
Tune to whose rise and fall we live and die.
Rise with it then! Rejoice that man is hurled
From change to change unceasingly,
His soul's wings never furled."
—_Robert Browning._
The destiny of each soul is reunion with the Absolute from which it
emanated. But this reunion may be accomplished only through yielding the
claims of the personal self to the greater Self, the Christos which
exists within each personality. A single word gives us the key to the
process,—brotherhood.
To this goal there is one royal road and many that are long and
terrible. But the royal road may be travelled only by those who are
immune from temptation because their consciousness is not centred in the
self which may be tempted. Understanding the law, they obey it, for only
by obedience may the law be transcended and the soul become free. That
is a royal road, indeed. But it is only for the few.
The other, cyclic and steep as the pathway that winds to the summit of
the Purgatorio mountain, must for ages be travelled by the multitudes;
for it is they who cannot as yet answer the questions, "Whence came I?
wherefore do I exist, and whither do I go?"
Spirit, when first differentiated from the Absolute, is simple, not
complex, undifferentiated, pure and good because it has not become
conscious of evil. To gain the experiences by which alone it may expand
its consciousness to infinity and become inclusive of all
differentiation, it becomes individualized and embodied. And this earth
is the scene of the experiences which the spirit needs and which it can
gain only by means of an embodiment of personality.
Cycle after cycle, life after life, the soul tests all the conditions of
earthly pleasure and pain by its own standard and measure. If that
standard be self, alienation will be swift and certain, and slow and
terrible will be the return to the divine. If the measure be
brotherhood, service, ministry to others, the soul remains one with God
and spiritual consciousness is by so much expanded.
Since brotherhood is the ideal, our very institutions, church, state,
and particularly the home, exist for no higher purpose than to develop
within the soul of humanity a conscious desire to live for others. It is
only because the soul manifests itself as two forces, in two sexes, man
and woman, that the institution of the home, as we know it, is made
possible. We fancy that these dual forces, incomplete and fluctuating,
become completed and stable only through marriage. The novelists have
threshed over this old straw for many weary years, for the view commonly
taken is superficial and untrue.
Marriage, in its deeper aspect, is a means by which the soul prepares
itself, through the joys of limited service, for that wider ministry
which includes the world. Emerson expresses it better when he says "the
lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of
Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls." Marriage opens the
shortest way by which men and women, self-centred and egotistical, may
be compelled, against their will if need be, to become conscious of the
joy of sacrifice and the beauty of service.
The child, like the childish race, is, in some respects, very much of a
savage. He has neither intellectual nor ethical ideas and, as Froebel
expresses it, "the first circle of a child's life is physical nature
bound by necessity." The baby cares only to be kept physically
comfortable, and he proposes to be kept so at the expense of others as
far as possible. He is a little egotist. The world is his oyster.
Selfishness, if he be not guided, is far more native to him during the
earliest period of his life, than altruism. And it is significant that a
large proportion of children grow into manhood and womanhood,
particularly in these days of ferment and individualism, with the firm
belief that, first of all, they must look out for themselves. They do
not voluntarily accept the path of brotherhood, but the law, the wise
law, forces them, by few or many hard experiences, to finally see the
wisdom of choosing it. By refusing to obey the law they place themselves
within the sweep of its mighty arm and are struck down.
We are all one; we minister to ourselves only as we minister to others.
We must first sacrifice self, else all the rest will not be added unto
us and even that which we have will be taken away. But before we are
capable of the wider ministry, we must prove ourselves by the narrower
service, and nature, with her wise economy, leads us into a field
wherein service and sacrifice are inevitable, and its gateway is
marriage.
Emerson gives us the key to this mystery when he says: "The man is only
half himself; his other half is his expression." The true expression is
service, the ideal which leads us to accept it is brotherhood, and to
that expression the other sex is only the embodied opportunity. To that
expression marriage is the guardian and the gateway only as husband and
wife accept all its culture and all its sacrifices, patiently, joyfully,
completely. That signifies, ordinarily, that both husband and wife must
lose their personal selves in their children, and if, for selfish
reasons, they refuse this service, they are missing the culture of this
incarnation. If they refuse it for reasons that are unselfish, for the
opportunities of a wider ministry, that is, as Kipling would say,
"another story." That is the supreme sacrifice.
It is, in most cases, wiser for husband and wife to fill their home with
little children for two reasons. In the first place, through the care of
children (the care of their minds and souls not less than of their
bodies), each forgets self and learns the A B C of that great lesson in
ministry which alone will make universal brotherhood possible upon the
face of the earth. Because these sacrifices are more inevitable to the
mother than to the father, she is likely to learn this lesson more
speedily, and perhaps that is one reason why the Ego clothes itself now
in one sex and now in another in the course of its earthly experiences.
Perhaps it is that we may learn this lesson of sacrifice well that the
newly embodied soul inflicts upon the builders of its physical body such
agonies, sacrifices, and anxieties, that their souls seem to be torn up
by the very roots, only to be planted, when quiet comes again, upon a
higher plateau and in an atmosphere less dense. Emerson has said truly,
"Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it."
Under existing conditions the lesson of selflessness will have to be
learned by most of us through this very differentiation of sex, and we
may make as much ado about it as we please. We may learn it through the
agony and the terror of a Hetty Sorrel or a Margaret, both of whom were
examples of extreme selfishness; we may accept it gracefully, as do the
average man and woman, with a very faint comprehension of what it all
means; or we may welcome and glorify parenthood as the Madonna glorified
it, prophesy of that future time when every child shall be the child of
an immaculate conception. "Help nature and work on with her, and nature
shall regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance."[2]
The second reason why the selfish person is delaying his own advancement
by refusing to fulfill the duties that he tacitly accepts by marriage is
very prosaic. We all like to assure ourselves that we are rays of the
Infinite, channels through which alone the God-message may be brought to
mankind. That is very inspiring. But it is not so inspiring to reflect
that we are also the gateways, self-appointed by the very estate of
marriage, through which other souls, more advanced than ourselves
perhaps, may come into the physical embodiment which they need for
future experience. That is quite another thing, and all the old self
which binds our souls rebels. For this means, to a great degree, the
sacrifice of our social pleasures, our recreations, time, money,
physical ease, perhaps health; it means broken rest, disorderly rooms,
the washing of bedaubed little hands, and the kissing of, oh, such dirty
little mouths. It means that we have to shut our Æschylus and shelve our
Faust and our Homer for a few years at least, and many a father and
mother look back with something like longing upon the old days when they
lived with these great souls and when their cherished books were not
smeared as to bindings and torn as to leaves.
Was it an accident that Froebel called the system of education that he
gave to the world "the science of motherhood"? Was it accidental that he
should dedicate the deepest and truest philosophy of which I have any
conception to the end that the father and the mother, and through them,
the child, might become able to look beneath the visible for the
invisible which conditions it; beneath the outer phenomena to the spirit
which gives it birth; beyond the transitory to the permanent. Such a
philosophy makes one very patient with physical duties and sacrifices
when they are regarded as only a means to an end that is higher than
physical. Such a philosophy makes it somewhat easier to "step out from
sunlight into shade to make more room for others."