[211] See infra, on [Regard for the Dead]. Contact with a self-murderer’s body is considered polluting (Prexl, ‘Geburts- und Todtengebräuche der Rumänen in Siebenbürgen,’ in Globus, lvii. 30; Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wirdarne, i. 459, 460, and ii. 412). We are told that in the eighteenth century people did not dare to cut down a person who had hanged himself, though he was found still alive (Frank, op. cit. iv. 499). Among the Bannavs of Cambodia everybody who takes part in the burial of a self-murderer is obliged to undergo a certain ceremony of purification, whereas no such ceremony is prescribed in the case of other burials (Mittheil. d. Geogr. Ges. zu Jena, iii. 9).
However, side by side with the extreme seventy with which suicide is viewed by the Christian Church, we find, even in the Middle Ages, instances of more humane feelings towards its perpetrator. In mediæval tales and ballads true lovers die together and are buried in the same grave; two roses spring through the turf and twine lovingly together.[212] In the later Middle Ages, says M. Bourquelot, “on voit qu’à mesure qu’on avance, l’antagonisme devient plus prononcé entre l’esprit religieux et les idées mondaines relativement à la mort volontaire. Le clergé continue à suivre la route qui a été tracée par Saint Augustin et à déclarer le suicide criminel et impie; mais la tristesse et le désespoir n’entendent pas sa voix, ne se souviennent pas de ses prescriptions.”[213] The revival of classical learning, accompanied as it was by admiration for antiquity and a desire to imitate its great men, not only increased the number of suicides, but influenced popular sentiments on the subject.[214] Even the Catholic casuists, and later on philosophers of the school of Grotius and others, began to distinguish certain cases of legitimate suicide, such as that committed to avoid dishonour or probable sin, or that of a condemned person saving himself from torture by anticipating an inevitable death, or that of a man offering himself to death for the sake of his friend.[215] Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, permits a person who is suffering from an incurable and painful disease to take his own life, provided that he does so with the agreement of the priests and magistrates; nay, he even maintains that these should exhort such a man to put an end to a life which is only a burden to himself and others.[216] Donne, the well-known Dean of St. Paul’s, wrote in his younger days a book in defence of suicide, “a Declaration,” as he called it, “of that paradoxe, or thesis, that Self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.” He there pointed out the fact—which ought never to be overlooked by those who derive their arguments from “nature”—that some things may be natural to the species, and yet not natural to every individual member of it.[217] In one of his essays Montaigne pictures classical cases of suicide with colours of unmistakable sympathy. “La plus volontaire mort,” he observes, “c’est la plus belle. La vie despend de la volonté d’aultruy; la mort, de la nostre.”[218] The rationalism of the eighteenth century led to numerous attacks both upon the views of the Church and upon the laws of the State concerning suicide. Montesquieu advocated its legitimacy:—“La société est fondée sur un avantage mutuel; mais lorsqu’elle me devient onéreuse, qui m’empêche d’y renoncer? La vie m’a été donnée comme une faveur; je puis donc la rendre lorsqu’elle ne l’est plus: la cause cesse, l’effet doit donc cesser aussi.”[219] Voltaire strongly opposed the cruel laws which subjected a suicide’s body to outrage and deprived his children of their heritage.[220] If his act is a wrong against society, what is to be said of the voluntary homicides committed in war, which are permitted by the laws of all countries? Are they not much more harmful to the human race than self-murder, which nature prevents from ever being practised by any large number of men?[221] Beccaria pointed out that the State is more wronged by the emigrant than by the suicide, since the former takes his property with him, whereas the latter leaves his behind.[222] According to Holbach, he who kills himself is guilty of no outrage on nature or its author; on the contrary, he follows an indication given by nature when he parts from his sufferings through the only door which has been left open. Nor has his country or his family any right to complain of a member whom it has no means of rendering happy, and from whom it consequently has nothing more to hope.[223] Others eulogised suicide when committed for a noble end,[224] or recommended it on certain occasions. “Suppose,” says Hume, “that it is no longer in my power to promote the interest of society; suppose that I am a burthen to it; suppose that my life hinders some person from being much more useful to society. In such cases my resignation of life must not only be innocent but laudable.”[225] Hume also attacks the doctrine that suicide is a transgression of our duty to God. “If it would be no crime in me to divert the Nile from its course, were I able to do so, how could it be a crime to turn a few ounces of blood from their natural channel? Were the disposal of human life so much reserved as the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on his right for men to dispose of their own lives, would it not be equally wrong of them to lengthen out their lives beyond the period which by the general laws of nature he had assigned to it? My death, however voluntary, does not happen without the consent of Providence; when I fall upon my own sword, I receive my death equally from the hands of the Deity as if it had proceeded from a lion, a precipice, or a fever.”[226]
[212] See Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 248; Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 322.
[213] Bourquelot, loc. cit. iv. 253.
[214] Ibid. iv. 464. Morselli, op. cit. p. 35.
[215] Buonafede, op. cit. p. 148 sqq. Lecky, op. cit. ii. 55.
[216] More, Utopia, p. 122.
[217] Donne, Biathanatos, p. 45. Donne’s book was first committed to the press in 1644, by his son.
[218] Montaigne, Essais, ii. 3 (Œuvres, p. 187).
[219] Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes, 76 (Œuvres, p. 53).