eself to the crocodiles in
the Ganges or casting oneself in the holy tanks in the temples, and so
on. It is the same on the stage--that mirror of life. For instance, in
the famous Chinese play, _L'Orphelin de la Chine_,[19] almost all the
noble characters end by suicide, without indicating anywhere or it
striking the spectator that they were committing a crime. At bottom it
is the same on our own stage; for instance, Palmira in _Mahomet_,
Mortimer in _Maria Stuart_, Othello, Countess Terzky. Is Hamlet's
monologue the meditation of a criminal? He merely states that
considering the nature of the world, death would be certainly
preferable, if we were sure that by it we should be annihilated. But
_there lies the rub_! But the reasons brought to bear against suicide by
the priests of monotheistic, that is of Jewish religions, and by those
philosophers who adapt themselves to it, are weak sophisms easily
contradicted.[20] Hume has furnished the most thorough refutation of
them in his _Essay on Suicide_, which did not appear until after his
death, and was immediately suppressed by the shameful bigotry and gross
ecclesiastical tyranny existing in England. Hence, only a very few
copies of it were sold secretly, and those at a dear price; and for this
and another treatise of that great man we are indebted to a reprint
published at Basle. That a purely philosophical treatise originating
from one of the greatest thinkers and writers of England, which refuted
with cold reason the current arguments against suicide, must steal about
in that country as if it were a fraudulent piece of work until it found
protection in a foreign country, is a great disgrace to the English
nation. At the same time it shows what a good conscience the Church has
on a question of this kind. The only valid moral reason against suicide
has been explained in my chief work. It is this: that suicide prevents
the attainment of the highest moral aim, since it substitutes a real
release from this world of misery for one that is merely apparent. But
there is a very great difference between a mistake and a crime, and it
is as a crime that the Christian clergy wish to stamp it. Christianity's
inmost truth is that suffering (the Cross) is the real purpose of life;
hence it condemns suicide as thwarting this end, while the ancients,
from a lower point of view, approved of it, nay, honoured it. This
argument against suicide is nevertheless ascetic, and only holds good
fro