“Supposing,” he says, “that there were no duties of this kind, there would not be any duties then of any kind; for I can only think myself under obligations to others, so far as I am under obligations to myself.... Thus do people say, when the question is to save a man or his life: I owe this to myself; I owe it to myself to cultivate such dispositions of mind as make of me a fit member of society (Doctrine de la vertu, trad. franç. de Barni, p. 70).”
132. Duties concerning the body.—Duty of self-preservation.—The duties toward one’s self are generally divided into two classes: duties toward the body, duties toward the soul. Kant justly criticised this distinction, and asks how can there be any obligations toward the body—that is to say, toward a mass of matter—which, apart from the soul, is nothing better than any of the rough bodies which surround us. Kant proposes to substitute for this distinction the following: duties of man toward himself as an animal (that is, united to animality by the corporeal functions), and the duties of man toward himself as a moral being.
Considered as an animal, man is united to a body, and this union of soul and body is what is called life. Hence a first duty which may be considered a fundamental duty, and the basis of all the others, namely, the duty of self-preservation. It is, in fact, obvious that the fulfillment of all our other duties rests on this prior one.
Before being a duty, self-preservation is for man an instinct, and even so energetic and so universal an instinct that there would seem to be very little need to transform it into duty: so much so is it an instinct that man has rather to combat in himself the cowardly tendency which attaches him to life, than that which induces him to seek death. Yet does it happen, and unfortunately too often, that men, crazed by despair, come to believe that they have a right to free themselves of life: this is what is called suicide. It is, therefore, very important in morals to combat this fatal idea, and to teach men that, even though life ceases to be a pleasure, there is still a moral obligation which they cannot escape.
133. Suicide.—J. J. Rousseau and Kant.—The question of suicide was treated with great ability by J. J. Rousseau in one of his most celebrated works. He put into the mouth of two personages, on the one side, the apology for, and on the other, the condemnation of suicide. We will not cite here these two pieces, the eloquence of which is somewhat declamatory, but we will give an abstract of the principal arguments presented on each side in favor of its own position.
Arguments in favor of suicide.—1. It is said that life is not our own because it was given us.—Not so, for, just because it was given us, is it our own. God has given us arms, and yet we allow them to be cut off when necessary.
2. Man, it is said, is a soldier on sentry on earth: he should not leave his post without orders.—So be it; but misfortune is precisely that order which informs me that I have nothing more to do here below.
3. Suicide, it is said again, is rebellion against Providence.—But how? it is not to escape its laws one puts an end to one’s life; it is to execute them the better: in whatever place the soul may be, it will always be under God’s government.
4. “If thy slave attempted to kill himself,” says Socrates to Cebes in the Phædo, “wouldst thou not punish him for trying unjustly to deprive thee of thy property?”—Good Socrates, what sayest thou? Does one no longer belong to God when dead? Thou art quite wrong; thou shouldst have said: “If thou puttest on thy slave a garment which is in his way in the service he owes thee, wouldst thou punish him for laying this garment aside in order the better to serve thee?”
5. It is said that life is never an evil.—Yet has nature implanted in us so great a horror of death that life to certain beings must surely be an evil, since they resolve to renounce it.