I knew a man, a captain in the navy, retired, a C.B., with a private income of £1200 a year, with no expenses but those of a lodging, no wife or family, who drowned himself because he was going blind, and this being so he could no longer superintend his affairs, and felt himself liable to be cheated, which was more than he could endure—and it certainly is a trial! This man was old and infirm, cool, unimpassioned, not wanting in even spirits, and fond of a joke. He had the full use of his faculties, and had frequent conversations with a weak-minded medical man, in the club-room over which he lodged, on the nature of various poisons without his purpose being suspected. It ended in his creeping into a water-cistern under the boards of an adjoining room.
Most of us grow tired of living, but we prefer the fatigue to nothing, though we may suffer pain that is all but insupportable.
A man who takes his own life may be mad in some respects, but not in committing the act, for he always does it in the right way. If he fired at his own bust instead of at himself, if he swallowed the bottle instead of the laudanum within it, if he cut his dog’s throat instead of his own, with a view to self-destruction, it would be madness itself. But he performs the act rationally and perpetrates it in a strictly methodical way.
There must be two kinds of courage, one of which is common to most men, and one which few possess and none comprehend.
I am told that when a certain reporter attends a meeting on behalf of a journal and finds out, from the speaker’s address, that the purpose for which the assembly is convened is worthless, he retires; and on taking up his note-book, looks at the person speaking and says, “Go home and cut your throat,”—words that might have well been addressed to the Bond Street swells.
XXXVII.
A steam-engine may be called the greatest of inventions, and could the best one as yet constructed have sufficient consciousness to register its excellencies and defects, according to its own knowledge and experience, it could not be accused of boastfulness or self-depreciation. Again, if a dog could be endowed, in addition to its faculties, with the power of expression, and could define in exact terms its sense of smell and so announce it more keen than that of all other animals, it could not be accused of vanity.
The steam-engine in its revelation might reflect credit on its designer and on the man who constructed it, and these might reflect credit on their maker, but not on themselves; they had no hand in the acquisition of their faculties. So with the dog, it would simply make its statement, and in so doing communicate a phenomenon that the science of man would otherwise be slow to reach.