I can, you say, avoid pain: no one is obliged to bear a toothache, if he can free himself from it.—Yes, unquestionably; but in finding a remedy for physical pain, instead of wronging the moral personality of man, I free it, on the contrary, of the evils which, in crushing it, tend to debase it. Besides, there are, moreover, pains from which it is not right to free one’s self. For example, it is not right to leave the sickbed of one dear to us because his pains are unbearable.
But life is full of misery, and, in certain cases, the evil is without any compensation.—The question is not whether life is agreeable or painful: it might be a question, if pleasure were the end of life; but if this end is duty, there are no circumstances, however painful, which do not leave room for the possibility of fulfilling a duty.
It is a sophism, they say, to call suicide a cowardice; for it requires a great deal of courage to take one’s life.—No one denies that there is a certain amount of physical courage coupled with taking one’s life; but there is a still greater courage, a moral courage, in braving pain, poverty, slavery. Suicide is therefore a relative cowardice. It matters not, moreover, whether suicide be a brave or a cowardly act; what is certain is, that man cannot destroy within himself the agent subject to the law of duty without implicitly denying this law and all there is within contained.
Finally, it will be said that the moral personality is distinct from the body, and that in destroying the body, one does not injure the personality. But we shall answer, that the only personality of which we can dispose, and of which we have the care, is that which is actually united to our physical body. It is that very personality that has duties to perform; it is that which we cannot sacrifice to a state of things absolutely unknown to us.
As to our duties toward others, there is no one that has absolutely no service to render to his fellow-men; and each of us is always able to render them the greatest of services, namely, to give them the example of virtue, courage, gentleness, and patience. Finally, in respect to God, if we look upon life as a trial, man has no right to free himself of this trial before it is ended; if we look upon it as a punishment, we have no right to cut short its duration as long as nature has not pronounced on it. Can we not, then, it is asked, change any thing in the order of things, since all is disposed by God?—Certainly we can; we can, as we see fit, modify things, but not persons.
God, it is said again, has given us life: we can, then, do with it what we like.—But life is not purely a gift, an absolute gift: it is bound up in the moral personality which is not in our power, and which is not to be considered a thing to traffic with, give away, or destroy.
To admit the legitimacy of suicide, is to admit that man belongs to himself as a thing belongs to its master; it is implicitly to admit the right to traffic with one’s own personality and, according to Kant’s energetic expression, “to treat one’s self as a means and not as an end.”
135. Suicide from a sense of honor.—All suicide, having for its motive the escape from pain (exception being made, of course, of suicides caused by insanity), should be condemned without qualification. But is it the same with suicides instigated by a feeling of honor, either to avoid an outrage one is threatened with, or to escape the shame of an outrage one has suffered?
We should certainly not blame too severely acts that have their source in purity and greatness of soul, and in such matters it is yet better to forgive the excess, than accustom one’s mind, by too cold reasoning, to look upon dishonor with patience or complacency. After all, the love of life speaks enough for itself without its being necessary to give it too much encouragement. Nevertheless, to consider the matter closely, it is certain that no one is responsible for acts he has not consented to; that, consequently, an act imposed on us by force, cannot inflict real dishonor; that ill-natured interpretations should have no weight with a strong mind, and that conscience is the only judge.
“We should,” says St. Augustin, speaking of Lucretia’s suicide, “resist the temptation of suicide when we have no crime to atone for.... Why should a man who has done no harm to another, do some to himself? Is he justified in killing an innocent man in his own person, to prevent the real criminal from perpetrating his design, and would he criminally cut short his own life for fear it be cut short by another?”[91]