To be useful to his country, or to his family, it is necessary that man should cherish his own peculiar existence, that he has an interest in conserving himself, loves the bonds which unite him to others, and is capable of occupying himself with their felicity. In short, that the suicide should be punished in the other life, and repent of his precipitate steps, it were needful that he should outlive himself, and that, in consequence, he should carry with him, into his future residence, his organs, his senses, his memory, his ideas, and his actual mode of existing and of thinking. In short, nothing is more useful than to inspire men with a contempt for death, and to banish from their minds the false ideas which are given them of its consequences. Death is a resource that we must not, by any means, take away from oppressed virtue, which the injustice of men frequently reduces to despair. If men feared death less, they would neither be slaves nor superstitious.
Cowardice nourishes it, and fear perpetuates it.
Such, my friends, is the necessary consequence of the doctrine of necessity.