6. It is said that suicide is a cowardice.—How many cowards, then, among the ancients! Arria, Eponina, Lucretia, Brutus, Cato! Certainly there is courage in suffering the evils one cannot avoid; but it were insanity to suffer voluntarily those from which one can free himself.
7. There are unquestionably duties that should attach us to life.—But he who is a burden to every one, and of no use to himself, why should he not have a right to quit a place where his complaints are importunate and his sufferings useless?
8. Why should it be allowable to get cured of the gout and not of life? If we consider the will of God, what evil is there for us to combat, that he has not himself sent us? Are we not permitted, then, to change the nature of any thing because all that is, is as he wished it?
9. “Thou shall not kill,” says the Decalogue.—But if this commandment is to be taken literally, one should kill neither criminals nor enemies.
Next comes the answer of my lord Edward, namely, J. J. Rousseau:
Arguments against suicide.—1. If life has no moral end, one can unquestionably free one’s self from it when it is too painful: if it has one, it is not permitted to set it arbitrary limits.
2. The wish to die does not constitute a right to die; otherwise, a similar wish might justify all crimes.
3. Thou sayest: Life is an evil; but if thou hast the courage to bear it, thou wilt some day say: Life is a good.
4. Physical pain may in extreme cases deprive one of the use of reason and will; but moral pain should be borne bravely.
5. No man is wholly useless; he has always some duties to fulfill.