The Portland daily press., 1880-09-15
Concerning Suicide.
Saturday Review

lodVuiudy hCflCH.J
The condemnation of suicide among the ans
clients was halting aud intermittent at best.
Pythagoras expressly forbids it, on the ground
recognized by Christian and theistic moralsts
generally in later times, that no one has a
right to depart from the position where God
has placed him, and Plato endorses his prohi-
bition though in a less absolute form. Arstot-
les condemnation is based on the duty of
citizens to the state, Plutarch considered it
cowardly and unworthy OF the dignity Of man.
the Neoplatonists condemned it as involving
perturbation and therefore pollution of the
soul; Cicero condemns, but stultiies his CEN
sures by his exceptions; Marcus Aurelius way-
ers in his judgment; Seneca openly applauds,
and the whole stole school followed him; Pliny
more than approves. And popular opinion
under the Roman Empire was to say the
least, entirely tolerant of suicide, which was
freely practiced, and not only by Stoics who
had Cato for their great exemplar. Lucretius
Cassius, Atticus, and Petronius Arbiter may
be named as conspicuous instances. To Sene-
ca the option of suicide appeared the one grand
consolation under the tyranny Of Nero; to PHI
ny it even constituted superiority in the lot
of man over that of the Deity, that he could at
any moment bring his existence to an end;
Epictetus thought it cowardly to live on when
life had become irksome from WEAKNESS or
disease, and on this principle the poet Silius
Italicus starved himself to death. In Stocal
teaching suicide was not merely permissible
but a virtue, and was deliberately practiced as
such. 1t has been justly observed that ''the
doctrine of suicide was the eliminating point
of Roman Stoicsm." as illustrating the proud
self-rpIant. unbaudiuO characfqr Of "a fr1ta
philosopher, whose coast it was to hope little
and fear nothing. Life and death in the
Stoical system were attuned to the same key
The deitication of human virtue, the total alb
sence OF all sense of sin, the proud, stubborn
will that deemed humiliation the worst of
stains, appeared alike in each"
And here too the Stocal, and indeed the
Pagan conception of ethics generally contrasted
most pointedly with the Christian ideal which
superseded it, 1t has been urged with literal
accuracy that suicide is not expressly forbid
den in the Bible as in the Koran-for in this,
rs in many points, Mohammed borrowed with
out acknowledgment from the ethical code Of
Christianity-but it was generally understood
by the ancient Jews, as afterward by Chris
tians, 10 be included under the prohibition of
murder, though in the middle ages the perse-
cuted jews sometimes destroyed themselves
by wholesale. The argument of Pythagoras
and Plato was from the first re-asserted and
enforced by Christian teachers, who felt, TO
use the language of Madame de Stae, that
there is no crime by which men appear SO
formally to renounce the protection Of God;"
out they aisosnsisted with great effect on the
virtue of resignation and the remedial and
sanctfying power of mental or bodily pain
which enter so largely into the ethical system
of ths early and medieval church. 2 Two kinds
only OF suicide, or quasi suicide, were for a
While tolerated and sometimes commended,
though both were condemned by the general
verdict of later Catholic opinion from the time
of st. Augustine downward; the voluntary
provocation OF martyrdom already mentioned,
and the self-destruction of Christian maidens
or matrons in the imminent prospect of viola
ton at the hands Of their heathen prosecutors
There are even canonized saints, like st. Pc.
lagia, whose merits are commemorated by Til
lemont, among the women who thus destroyed
themselves.