world is
mainly instinctive, and therefore very tolerant to all assertions of
the will to live; it is in other words full of toleration for itself;
no one is reproved for bringing a dozen children into the world,
though he cannot support them, because to reprove him would involve a
partial condemnation of the will to live; and the world will not
condemn itself.

"If suicide merely cut the individual thread of life our brothers
would rejoice. Nature is concerned in the preservation of the
species, not in the preservation of the individual; but suicide is
more than the disappearance of an individual life, it is a protest
against all life, therefore man, in the interest of the life of the
race, condemns the suicide. The struggle for life is lessened by
every death, but the injury inflicted on the desire of life is
greater; in other words, suicide is such a stimulant to the exercise
of reason (which has been proved antagonistic to life), that man, in
defence of instinct, is forced to condemn suicide.

"And it is curious to note that of all the manners of death which may
bring them fortune, men like suicide the least; a man would prefer to
inherit a property through his father falling a prey to a disease
that tortured him for months rather than he should blow his brains
out. If he were to sound his conscience, his conscience would tell
him that his preference resulted from consideration for his father's
soul. For as man acquired reason, which, as I have shown, endangers
the sovereignty of the will to live, he developed notions of eternal
life, such notions being necessary to check and act as a drag upon
the new force that had been introduced into his life. He says suicide
clashes with the principle of eternal life. So it does, so it does,
he is quite right, but how delightful and miraculously obtuse. We
must not take man for a reasoning animal; ants and bees are hardly
more instinctive and less reasonable than the majority of men.

"But far more than with any ordinary man is it amusing to discuss
suicide with a religionist. The religionist does not know how to
defend himself. If he is a Roman Catholic he says the Church forbids
suicide, and that ends the matter; but other churches have no answer
to make, for they find in the Old and New Testament not a shred of
text to cover themselves with. From the first page of the Bible to
the last there is not a word to say that a man does not hold his life
in his hands, and may not