will not be put
off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal law forbids
suicide, that is not an argument valid in the Church; and besides, the
prohibition is ridiculous; for what penalty can frighten a man who is
not afraid of death itself? If the law punishes people for trying
to commit suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the
attempt a failure.

The ancients, moreover, were very far from regarding the matter in
that light. Pliny says: _Life is not so desirable a thing as to be
protracted at any cost. Whoever you are, you are sure to die, even
though your life has been full of abomination and crime. The chief
of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the
blessings which Nature gives to man, there is none greater than an
opportune death; and the best of it is that every one can avail
himself of it.[1]_ And elsewhere the same writer declares: _Not even
to God are all things possible; for he could not compass his own
death, if he willed to die, and yet in all the miseries of our earthly
life, this is the best of his gifts to man.[2]_ Nay, in Massilia
and on the isle of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons
for relinquishing his life, was handed the cup of hemlock by the
magistrate; and that, too, in public.[3] And in ancient times, how
many heroes and wise men died a voluntary death. Aristotle,[4] it is
true, declared suicide to be an offence against the State, although
not against the person; but in Stobaeus' exposition of the Peripatetic
philosophy there is the following remark: _The good man should flee
life when his misfortunes become too great; the bad man, also, when
he is too prosperous_. And similarly: _So he will marry and beget
children and take part in the affairs of the State, and, generally,
practice virtue and continue to live; and then, again, if need be,
and at any time necessity compels him, he will depart to his place of
refuge in the tomb.[5]_ And we find that the Stoics actually praised
suicide as a noble and heroic action, as hundreds of passages show;
above all in the works of Seneca, who expresses the strongest approval
of it. As is well known, the Hindoos look upon suicide as a religious
act, especially when it takes the form of self-immolation by widows;
but also when it consists in casting oneself under the wheels of the
chariot of the god at Juggernaut, or being eaten by crocodiles in the
Ganges, or being drowned in the holy tanks in the te