[16] Duverger de Haurane, abbot of St. Cyran, regarded as the founder of Port Royal, wrote, in the year 1608, a treatise on suicide, which has, says Voltaire, become one of the scarcest books in Europe.
He says the decalogue forbids us to kill. In this precept, self-murder seems no less to be comprised than murder of our neighbour. But if there are cases in which it is allowable to kill our neighbour, there likewise are cases in which it is allowable to kill ourselves. We must not make an attempt upon our lives until we have consulted reason. The public authority, which holds the place of God, may dispose of our lives. The reason of man may likewise hold the place of the reason of God,—it is a ray of the eternal light.
Voltaire, disposed as he was to advocate the right of committing suicide whenever a man considered death preferable to a dishonourable life, had sufficient sagacity to see through the glaring sophistry of St. Cyran’s reasoning on this point. The same author says, “A man may kill himself for the good of his prince, for that of his country, or for that of his relations.”
[17] It is evident that the great dramatist considered that suicide was opposed to the divine will.
“Against self-slaughter
There is a prohibition so divine,
That cravens my weak hand.”
Again, he says—
“Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ’gainst self-slaughter!”