The Russellville Democrat., 1877-05-10
Views of Suicide.

| EIVVS VI phhSAuCs
 l A great deal of pernicious nonsense i has been written and spoken in justifica- tion of suicide. It was urged that there | is no passage in the Old or New Testa- ment which expressly forbids it. But,
 as Madame de Stael, in her excellent
 " Reflections on Suicide" has remarked,
 such crime is so opposed to the whole
 spirit of christianity that the prohibition
 of it in the New Testament would have
 been wholly superfuous. Among the Greeks it was certainly not regarded, as
 some of it's modern apologists would
 make out, with any favor. In the Ho-
 merle age itseemed to have been almost l unknown. One of the Athenian laws
 distinctly provides that the hand of the
 self-murderer should. be cut off. Both Pythagoras and Plaso strongly disap- proved of it, and the latter has, in a
 celebrated passage, compared men to sol diers, who should not duit their posts till the commander ordered them, though in l the laws he makes an exception in favor
 of those who are oppressed with incura-
 ble disease. The subject seems to have
 had fascination for Sophocles, though | it is remarkable that Tn all cases he treats | it as either of madness, as in the case of l Ajax, or of sudden frenzy as ill the
 case of Jocasta, Hamon, and Antigone.
 What Euripides thought of it is doubt
 full, though it is pretty certain that, true
 to his sophistic instinct, he would have
 thought exactly what the. majority of his couptrymen did not think. Aristotle,
 adopting the theory of the Greek legis-
 lators, forbids it on the political ground that man has no right to deprive the
 state of his services, and both Porphyry
 and Polonius have argued strongly
 against it. There is passage of singular
 beauty in the "Argonautica" of AppOl-
 lonius Rhodius, where, in describing the emotions which swayed Medea as she
 held the poison in her hand, he sums up what may be called the natural argu- ments against this act. The history of suicide among the Romans is not little l curious. It was not forbidden in any Of
 their laws, and is even at times encour- aged. At Marseilles, if we can believe
 Valerius Maximus, poison was provided
 by the state to be officially presented to all who should apply for it, provided
 they could show cause why they should
 not live. Though some of the noblest names in the Roman annals are the names I of those who, finding it impossible to | live nobly, were fain to die nobly, still | it is easy to see that such step was held | to be iustifable only under circumstan- ces which made it impossible for man to live with honor, and fulfill his duties
 as a citizen. This is especially notice
 able in Virgil account of Dido's self l inflicted death. He deals gently with
 her because he is carried away by that
 sensitive, almost offeminate tenderness,
 which characterizes his genius, and be-
 cause, as he is careful to remark, she had
 acted under the impulse of sudden
 frenzy. In the sixth book of the Eneid
 he has dealt with suicides in passage
 which it would be we'll for any man who
 may be meditating self-destruction to
 get by heart. Cicero strongly condemns | it, so also do Cesar and Ovid; Horace
 rather avoids the topic, Lucian praises,
 and Silius Italicus practiced it. Lucre- tius has, however, apparently pleaded
 for it so eloquently that one of his
 learned editors and transactors, Rev. Thomas Creech, was induced to hang
 himself. The reverend gentleman is said
 to have been in love with Afra Behn; it
 is quite possible that the trying caprices of that trail beauty may have been as
 instrumental in suspending him as the
 sonorous hexameters of the Roman poet. It is almost unnecessary to observe that
 Lucretius merely advocates suicide when
 a man is worthless either from extreme
 age or incurable disease. The great I L. nf
 the Stoics, though the more sensible
 among them, like Epictetus and Marcus
 Aurelius, represent it. as dangerous
 remedy, and they can scarcely be num-
 bered among its advocates. Seneca, the
 Pecksniff of ancient literature, who was,
 however, by strange irony, made to
 practice what he preached, has dilated
 on its advantages with that fiorid elo' ouence which seldom fails to characterize
 decaying literature. The younger Pliny, who was evidently more ready tC praise it than to commit it, has observed in droll truism that in the power o putting an end to his existence man pos sesses prerogative denied to the gods On the whole, the Roman attitude to ward suicide was this-that man could not be master of himself till he had mas
 tered the fear of death, and that mar z who threw away life which was worth keeping was at once coward and fool z The canon law does not forbid suicide but the fathers do, though they allow that woman is justified in killing her self to preserve her chastity. The school , men and the later casuists have sue ceeded in reducing the problem to the chaos of pros and cons to which they have reduced every other problem sub .litted to them. The koran emphati cally forbids it, and our law considers the suicide as guilty of double ofiense- one spiritual, in invading the prerogativt , of the Almighty, and rushing into Hi Z presence uncalled for; the other tempo ral, against the sovereign, who has al interest in the preservation of his sub
 ject.-L0ndon Ne,cs.