The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1880-10-07
Concerning Suicides.


The condemnation Of suicide among
the ancicnts was hating and intermit-
tent at best. Pythagoras expressly for
bids it, on the ground recognized by
Christian and theistic moralists gener-
ally in later times, that no one has a
right to depart from the position where
God has placed him, and Plato endorses
his prohibition, though in a less abso-
lutte form. Aristotle's 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 in
volving a perturbation and therefore
pollution of the soul; Cicero condemns,
but stultlties his censures by his excep-
tions; Marcus Aurelius wavers in his
judgment; Seneca openly applauds, and
the whole stole school followed him;
Pliny more than approves. And popu-
lar 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 Seneca the option of suicide APP
peared the one grand consolation under
the tyranny of Nero; to Pliny it even
constituted a superiority in the lot of
man over that of the Deity, that he
could at any moment bring his exist
ence to an end; Epictetus thought it
cowardly to live on when life had be-
come irksome from WEAKNESS or dis
ease, and on this principle the poet
Silius 1talicus starved himself to death.
In Stoical teaching suicide was not
merely permissible but virtue, and
was deliberately practiced as such. 1t
has been justly observed that g the doc
trine' of suicide was the eliminating
point OF Roman Stoicism," as illustrat-
ing the proud, self-reliant, unbending
character of the true philosopher, whose
boast it waste hope little and fear moth
ing. Life and death in the Stoical
system were attuned to the same key.
The dedication of human virtue, the to-
tai absence of all sense of sin, the proud
stubborn will that deemed humiliation
the worst of stains, appeared alike in
each" + t'tt t
And here too the Stoical, and indeed
the Pagan conception of ethics gener-
ally, contracted most pointedly with the
Christian ideal which superseded it.
1t has been urged with literal accuracy
that suicide is not expressly forbidden
in the Bible, as it is in the Koran-for
in this, as in many points, Mohammed
borrowed without acknowledgment
from the ethical code of Christianity
but it was generally understood by the
Of L.
tians. to be included under the prohi-
bition of murder, though in the middle
ages the prosecuted Jews sometimes de-
stroyed themselves by wholesale. The
argument of Pythagoras and Plato was
from the first reasserted and enforced
by Christian teachers, who felt, to use
the language of Madame de Stael, that
"there is no crime by which men APP
pear so formally to renounce the pro-
lection of God; y but they also insisted
with great effect on the virtue of resig-
nation and the remedial and sanctifying
power of mental or bodily pain, which
enter 50 largely into the ethical system
OF the early and medieval church. Two
kinds only Of suicide. or quasi suicide,
were for a while tolerated and some-
times commended, though both were
condemned by the general verdict of
later Catholic opinion from the time of
st. Augustine downward the volun-
tary provocation of marfyrdom already
mentioned, and the self-destruction of
Christian maidens or matrons in the inn
minent prospect of violation at the
hands OF their heather prosecutors.
There are even canonized saints, like
st. Pelagia, whose merits are comment
GRATED by Iillemont, among the women
who thus destroyed themselves.-Lon-
don Saturday ReUiew.