[220] Voltaire, Commentaire sur le livre Des délits et des peines, 19 (Œuvres complètes, v. 416). Idem, Prix de la justice et de l’humanité, 5 (ibid. v. 424).
[221] Idem, Note to Olympie acte v. scène 7 (Œuvres complètes, i. 826, n. b). Idem, Dictionnaire Philosophique, art. Suicide (ibid. viii. 236).
[222] Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, § 35 (Opere, i. 101).
[223] Holbach, Système de la nature, i. 369.
[224] In the early part of the nineteenth century this was done by Fries, Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft, iii. 197.
[225] Hume, ‘Suicide,’in Philosophical Works, iv. 413.
[226] Ibid. p. 407 sqq.
Thus the main arguments against suicide which had been set forth by pagan philosophers and Christian theologians were scrutinised and found unsatisfactory or at least insufficient to justify that severe and wholesale censure which was passed on it by the Church and the State. But a doctrine which has for ages been inculcated by the leading authorities on morals is not easily overthrown; and when the old arguments are found fault with new ones are invented. Kant maintained that a person who disposes of his own life degrades the humanity subsisting in his person and entrusted to him to the end that he might uphold it.[227] Fichte argued that it is our duty to preserve our life and to will to live, not for the sake of life, but because our life is the exclusive condition of the realisation of the moral law through us.[228] According to Hegel it is a contradiction to speak of a person’s right over his life, since this would imply a right of a person over himself, and no one can stand above and execute himself.[229] Paley, again, feared that if religion and morality allowed us to kill ourselves in any case, mankind would have to live in continual alarm for the fate of their friends and dearest relations[230]—just as if there were a very strong temptation for men to shorten their lives. But common sense is neither a metaphysician nor a sophist. When not restrained by the yoke of a narrow theology, it is inclined in most cases to regard the self-murderer as a proper object of compassion rather than of condemnation, and in some instances to admire him as a hero. The legislation on the subject therefore changed as soon as the religious influence was weakened. The laws against suicide were abolished in France by the Revolution,[231] and afterwards in various other continental countries;[232] whilst in England it became the custom of jurymen to presume absence of a sound mind in the self-murderer—perjury, as Bentham said, being the penance which prevented an outrage on humanity.[233] These measures undoubtedly indicate not only a greater regard for the innocent relatives of the self-murderer, but also a change in the moral ideas concerning the act itself.
[227] Kant, Metaphysische Anfangungsgründe der Tugendlehre, p. 73.
[228] Fichte, Das System der Sittenlehre, p. 339 sqq. See also ibid. pp. 360, 391.