Should let itself be snuffed out by an article”—
all these seem to loathe life, or, at any rate, lose much of their fondness for it. It is curious to remark, too, how little, as in the last-mentioned instance, will suffice to extinguish, abruptly or gradually, this usually tenacious instinct. A man in York cut his throat, because, as he left in writing, “he was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning.” The occurrence of a loathsome but very curable disease in a patient of mine, just when he was about to be married, induced him to plunge among the breakers off Sullivan’s Island, on one of the coldest days of our coldest winter. A Pole in New York wrote some verses just before the act of self-destruction, implying that he was so weary of uncertainty as to the truth of the various theories of the present and future life, that he “had set out on a journey to the other world to find out what he ought to believe in this.”
We are always interested in observing the conduct of brave men, who exhibit a strongly-marked love of life, with little or no fear of death. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Herault Sechelles, who commenced their revolutionary career as reckless as they seemed ferocious, having attained elevation, acquired wealth, and married beautiful women, became merciful and prudent. Hunted in their turn by the bloodhounds of the time, they made the most earnest endeavors to escape, but displayed a noble courage in meeting their fate when inevitable.
It is a trite but true remark, that men will boldly face one mode of death, and shrink timidly from another. A soldier, whom discipline will lead without flinching “up to the imminent deadly breach,” will cower before a sea-storm. Women, even in the act of suicide, dreading explosion and blood, prefer poison and drowning. Men very often choose firearms and cutting instruments, which habit has made familiar.
If the nervous or sensorial system escape lesion during the ravages of disease, the conduct of the last hour will be apt to be consistent with the previous character of the individual. Hobbes spoke gravely of death as “a leap in the dark.” Hume talked lightly of Charon and his ferry-boat. Voltaire made verses with his usual levity—
“Adieu, mes amis! adieu, la compagnie!
Dans deux heures d’ici, mon âme aneantie
Sera ce que je fus deux heures avant ma vie.”
Keats murmured, poetically, “I feel the flowers growing on my grave.” Dr. Armstrong died prescribing for a patient; Lord Tenterden, uttering the words “Gentlemen of the Jury, you will find;” General Lord Hill, exclaiming “Horrid war!” Dr. Adams, of the Edinburgh High School, “It grows dark; the boys may dismiss!” The last words of La Place were, “Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose; ce que nous ignorons, est immense!”
The history of suicide, of death in battle, and of executions, is full of such instances of consistent conduct and character. Madame Roland desired to have pen and paper accorded to her, at the “Place de la Guillotine,” that she might, as she phrased it, “set down the thoughts that were rising in her mind.” Sir Thomas More jested pleasantly as he mounted the scaffold. Thistlewood, the conspirator, a thoughtful man, remarked to one of his fellow-sufferers that, “in five minutes more, they would be in possession of the great secret.” When Madame de Joulanges and her sisters were executed, they chanted together the Veni Creator on their way from the prison to the fatal spot. Head after head fell under the axe, but the celestial strain was prolonged until the very last voice was hushed in the sudden silence of death.