The Washington times., 1911-05-20
TIMELY LETTERS TO THE TIMES MAIL. BAG

eide for conscience sake, even though
folly. Have not patriots preferred to
die than live subject to tyranny? Was It
the less suicide because 1t was unset
fish? A sacrifice?
The case your correspondent presents
postulates that his 6eath would iniure
no one else. 1t might actually prove a
blessing! Such cases can easily be con-
ceived. Can We, therefore, determine
the good or evil of self-infiicted death
save by its relation to conditions; that
Is, relatively? Good men galore have
prayed to die, when they felt their
work was done, and that very prayer
had its power by a law of the mind, to
shorten life.
Elijah on Mount Horeb is an exam
pie. Count Tolstoy, in this age, is an
other. And even Jesus of Nazareth as
sured his followers that he laid down
his hfe"-that no man took 1t! Is not
this the same principle, since he could
have saved it?
Take the case of the Roman COM
premacy in the republic. He slays him
self and his age applauds his deed
Why? For the same reason that they
applauded the generosity of Grant at
Appomatox-the spirit of the age; that
was the way the public looked at such
things in those lays. Cleopatra prefers
death to life in chains at the wheels OF
Roman chariot in Caesars triumph.
And who will not applaud her? If that
was the spirit of the age, to humiiate
the vanqulshed, why may not the VIC.
time choose to die rather than submit.
That is what the martyr does; he pre-
fers the stake to recantation. And the
opinions of his age largely decided for
him. Every observation in your edi-
torial is gem, deserving reflection, and
yet there Is more to say. AS / see II,
the fundamental error of your corre-
spondent escapes you, namely:
His erroneous view of life.
i mean by that his view Of God and
his destiny-his future.
He speaks of meeting God, going be-
fore God, coming into His presence. He
be out of His presence at any time,
anywhere. He is the Omnipresent Life.
In Him, by Him, we live and move and
have our being.
Life is not to be: life forever is. And
who shall say what stage or state Of
one particular manifestation is its best
bloom? The universal law Is plain
progress: but progress means good use
of the present, to insure better use Of
the future.
Suicide is no more cowardly. save in
degree, than any other act that fails to
make the best of gifts and opportunity.
We are forced often by conditions be-
yond our control to make choice of a
course of conduct-not always one Of
two, both undesirable, but one out Of
several, any one of which Is a "hard'
condition. But when the issue is plainly
and squarely set, that we must submit
to conditions shameful, humiliating, or
tyrannical, or turn to suicide as an al
tentative, who shall judge his fellow
and call him cowardly II he ends his
life.
The Roman father struck down his
devoted daughter to save her and his
home from social shame, and even this
liberal age applauds his pagan virtue.
II your daughter prefers death by her
own hand to social dishonor, will you
call her cowardly?
1t is not difficult to conceive of con-
ditions so humiliating that a sensitive
soul would not hesitate to choose death,
self-infiicted, to endurance of such ig-
nominy. There Is no redress at law
for manv heart breaking conditions. and
the more shame to our age that there
is not: that Is why the nobler self as
serts itself, and will not be bound by
creed, custom, or law, and prefers to
take the short, quick course to des-
perate solution.
Better, turn a deadly weapon uDon
yourself In despair than upon another,
even an enemy, In revenge. But. better
yet, become master by healthy, vigor-
Gus thinking and defy fate's worst to
defeat your high destiny.
Richmond. Va