Well, as I have said, I do not remember precisely how I formulated my conclusions, but I finally resolved to make away with myself. Unfortunately, however, one of the traits with which I was endowed by nature, was a fear of physical suffering, and when the resolution to take my own life had been formed, I still had to deal with my physical cowardice.
It has been said that only cowards and lunatics commit suicide. There was never a greater lie than this. Lunatics may suicide—cowards, never. It requires true heroism to face an unknown hereafter—to fly from those ills we have to those we know not of. And the hapless one to whom life is a burden must have courage par excellence, to enable him to face that dread future which, if he be scripturally credulous, must needs be more fearful than the terrestrial unhappiness that he fain would escape. No, suicide requires bravery, and I was not brave—I had hardly gotten beyond that dread of darkness and solitude which is the bane of childish existence. What wonder that I dreaded to take so radical a road out of my slough of despond?
The physical penalty of self-destruction was the most important obstacle to be overcome if I would escape from my mental slavery. So great was my dread of it, that—well, I lived, and, more’s the pity, am still living, a miserable misanthrope, in whom the misery of the present is exceeded only by his dread of the unknown country, and his physical fears of the means necessary to take him hence.
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I wonder if there are many who are entrusted with the care of youth, who ever think of their influence in moulding its future destinies. I have long since forgiven my father for his harshness—but the memory of my youthful sorrows can never be effaced. Does science recognize such a thing as a mental scar? It should. And mental scars, though unseen, are not only permanent, but ever painful. Death finally claimed my father through his one infirmity. He died of apoplexy, superinduced by one of his attacks of blind, unreasoning passion. I know not where he is, but I trust he is unconscious of the results of his mismanagement of his unfortunate son. I say I know not where he is, advisedly. My views of the hereafter—if I may call the chaotic ideas I have hitherto entertained, views—have undergone considerable modification of late. I am losing my egotism, and gradually coming to believe that death is but another name for oblivion. How prosaic it is, to be sure. By no means so satisfying to the ignorant, and those of the faith—which is sometimes another way of putting the same proposition—as that halo of glory for the good, or that blaze of everlasting fire for the wicked, which theology from time immemorial has prescribed for the dying. And if oblivion be the finality, what more could the All Father do for his tired children?
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What would my life have been had I possessed a different temperament? Possibly if I had been born of other blood, and under more propitious skies, I would have seen the world through different eyes. There might have been more coleur de rose and less of sombre tints and neutrals. To be born in the shadows—ah, me! The sun of morning has never gilded my mountain tops, nor even at mid-day penetrated the fog and gloom of the valleys of my soul. Golden sunsets and glorious afterglows are not for me. Twilight alone is, and ever has been mine. Perhaps if I could have loved—’Tis said that love illumines one’s soul. But I have never loved. There was once a woman, whom men called beautiful, but I do not remember much of her. She had a skin of blood and milk, golden hair, and pale blue eyes that never looked straight at you. Her voice, as I recall it, was sweet enough, but it did not ring true, and when she laughed—but why do I speak of her? She did not understand, and she is but a dream figure now.
Some one has said that ambition is the main-spring of life. I do not know, yet I have had ambition—of a certain kind. Mine has been to learn, to know, to acquire wisdom that should raise me out of the dead level of mediocrity. But Ambition is the twin sister of Discontent, and Discontent is the mother of Melancholy and Despair. Work as I might—and I have never been a drone—there has always been some one just ahead of me whose results were so much more commendable than my own that,—well, one might as well work on, even though he never accomplishes anything worth while. Certain it is that the world has been no better for anything I ever did. And still I work. I often wonder if the fellow ahead of me in life’s battle does not feel the same way;—there’s always another just ahead of him. There can be no satisfaction in work well done when another goal is looming up just beyond the one we have reached. I saw a herd of cattle the other day, lying beneath a spreading oak, placidly chewing their cuds, and as I looked at them I fancied they gazed at me somewhat pityingly. “Ah,” I thought, “here is contentment indeed.” I really envied them—until I noticed the flies that tormented their glossy hides. One might as well be tormented by ambitions as by flies and gnats. Possibly Nature is jealous of her children, and will permit none of them to experience the joy of mere living unannoyed.
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A friend of mine once said to me, “How very odd, that you should have taken up the science of chemistry and made a recluse of yourself, delving and diving into secrets of nature which, as you have never made any practical use of them, might as well have remained mysteries.” Here was another who did not understand—another who, like all the rest of those who called themselves and whom I called my friends, could not sympathize with me in my devotion to study, because there were no flesh pots in sight to serve as a motive for the work. To such sordid ones I could not well lay bare the bitter humiliations with which my all too evident failure to attain practical results have afflicted me. I could not lay bare the secret aspirations that impelled me to seek for things which would have given me a place as a benefactor of my kind and enrolled me among the immortals. And suppose I had ever confessed that the mystery of ancient alchemy so impressed me that I must needs grasp at its only modern representative, chemistry—would not my friends have laughed at me?