Is Suicide Justifiable?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 298, 14 May 1889, Page 4

Is Suicide Justifiable?

There have lately been some strange suicides in Napier and elsewhere, and the appended article, taken from the Spectator, ought to be very interesting :—

We quoted last week the opinion of a contemporary that Mr Pigott’s suicide went far •• to atone for his manifold misdeeds and though the meaning may only have been that by throwing the most complete discredit on his testimony, he undid whatever mischief his testimony had done, the remark shows a marvellous indifference to the personal sin of suicide, a complete oblivion of any aspect of thia particular act except the aspect which affected its bearing on the Irish question, Is there or is there not a growing tolerance for suicide as an act for which man has the full responsibility, and which he has as much right to choose for himself, after full consideration, as he has to choose to emigrate or to volunteer for an Arctic voyage 1 We rather think there is; and we should not wonder that there should be such growing tolerance, if it be indeed true that in the better educated classes belief in the providence of God, — indeed, any genuine belief in God,—is on the decline, fl a blind destiny has brought a man into the world, he may fairly think that he has a right to decline the life that is thus forced upon him by some power for which he can feel no sort of reverence, and to do so at any time at which the burden appears to be more than he can bear. Suppose any one to be really convinced that God’s providence is a fiction, and also that no human being has any just claim on his life, and further, that the life of both soul and body ceases absolutely with death, these assumptions being granted, we cannot conceive why he should not com-

mit suicide whenever he is sick of living. Of course, we do not believe that any man ever is really convinced of this. There is some mysterious hope or dread which haunts the soul even of the most deliberate sceptic, that gives him " pause,” as Hamlet says, when he prepares to plunge into the world beyond, But the fainter the the general belief in God's providence becomes, the fainter are these warnings against treating our life as a possession which we are at liberty to keep or to cast away at pleasure. And undoubtedly, when public opinion declares that a man could hardly do more "to atone for his manifold misdeeds ” than precipitate himself out of life, a great stimulus must be given to the notion that suicide is not a kind of murder at all, not even the least guilty of its forms, but it is a legitimate exercise of individual responsibility by one who has perhaps as good means of knowing whether his continued existence is desirable for himself and the world, or not. If life is given us by God as the meant of education for our characters, it is obvious enough that we are not to choose for ourselves when we will regard that education as at an end. Ho who gave us our bodily life as the field tor the education of our Character, may be trusted to take it away again whep the uses of that education ata fulfilled. But if that is not so, if our life has emerged from darkness, end is again to be merged in daikners at its elore, it is difficult indeed to understand why there should be any more cowardice in saying, 1 To this I am not equal; it is doing neither me nor any one else any good, so far as I can perceive, and there is no one, so far as I know, fitter to judge the matter than myself,’ than there would be in a General officer's saying, l Thia post cannot be held by the force I have under my command ; we shall all ba cut to pieces it we stay, and therefore I propose to retreat from it while there is yet time.’ No doubt the motive of the two retreats is not identical. The retreat of the officer from a post he cannot bold, is intended to save life qnd. to economise the force which is at bta country’s dispesa'. And though the retreat of a euicide from life can only at best be intended to save himself pain and to remove a source of perplexity and embarrassment from the lot of others, yet the latter object, if not as worthy of praise as the former, is at least legitimate in its way, where it does not involve any clear abandoning of a higher duty; nor does it involve any such abandoning of a higher duty to one who is profoundly convinced that life is not a trust committed to his hands by a divine wisdom, but a labyrinth of misfor. tune in which he has been involved by the inevitable evolution cf a chaotic To Socrates, who held that we had been placed at our post as a sentinel is placed at his by the orders of his General, suicide was an act of cowardice and disobedience j but there is neither cowardice nor disobedi- 10 e in it ' io the man who is heartily P- lEUa ded,—it any ?X" e ;:‘V°>. pe v Bua4Ba ,-that life is a scrape the selected -•‘Hen os a lot fa . lla upon sins and the- .umer.t of a group of asssasfrom lib -• he has 46 mueh right t 0 escape have when !t hccomeB unendurable, as we " to abdicate official functions in which ..e have been entangled without our consent and against our better judgment, by the pressure of a momentary emergency. But to any one who has not this persualion, to any one who is even so much as doubtful whether life is an education provided for us by infinite wisdom, or a thicket into which we have wandered without guidance and without resource, suicide should surely appear at once an arrogant and imbecile mistake. It is arrogant, because nothing is more arrogant for a blind creature who does not know whether he is or is not under the guidance of another’s clear vision, than to take for granted that there is no such guidance, and precipitate the very destiny that is most dreaded ; and it is imbecile, because it Resumes the worse of two alternatives, which must be disastrous, while the Other which only might prove to be so, was Still left open, U yon are being guided and educated by a higher wisdom, you may reap a rich moral harvest out of a submission on behalf of which your own sense cf helpless pess powerfully pleads. It not, you can obviously reap no gain at all from assuming that the darkness is impenetrable from above as well as from beneath, since docility, even without a teacher, can hardly, except by pure accident, be more injurious to us than selfwill in the same predicament. When everything darkens round us, there is a natural fitness in the attitude cf humility and submissiveness which witnesses strongly against any daring and high handed act. To do and dare is appropriate to the zig-zag lightning genius or inspiration ; it is not appropriate to the sense of utter bewilderment and oonfulion. “In your patienceyo shell win your souls,” is the lesson appropriate to such a state cf mind, even though that lesson onlv initiates a great moral experiment of which we cannot foresee the issue. And "In yau'r patience ye shall win your souls. 11 is a precept which very strongly and naturally suggests that in our impatience we shall lose them. The man who strikes out wildly in thick darkness must feel that ho is playing a mad part. A man who gropes on all sides and waits, must feel that he is playing, to say the very least, the part which, nature for the moment imposes upon him, whether that nature be the instrument of perfect wisdom or not. “ Behold, we count them happy which endure,” awakens some echo in the heart of the most miserable sufferer under inevitable anguish; for he feels that suffering too, may be a calling, and may breed a wisucm of which ho has & dim forecast. But no one has said, in reference to “ the pangio ‘nternal pangs ” of inevitable suffering, » a >?> ', Ke . c * :Bnl Si,ees ha PPy which revolt, ” Anfl if it had bean said, it would have carried |t> own refutation with it, for revolt adds the poignancy cf such suffering instead o j relieving (L and turns the dim conscio: . 11eBS of a possible vocation into the moral CfliUpsy Of despair. >/uey»y a °( e T E< V I ? at a u fl m ere doubter wbather God’s provi' ru u a or one’ :C? lie i?r Wi,h to any 9? 8 * b ° bel,ev ' !E bear ’jly in God, not tp speak of revelation y Oq(1 BppOint3 so oomnkteW 6t ’ til4 bl ' ita lfom ua (0 Completely the eonseqamice of putting ourselves to ap atb, that we avg simply *. Ud ’ ignorant, -of what we choose tn Choosing lelf-aleaght er, it is simply huposelb.e fat one y . Q H eves [ n fils provi. cence to prefer the lot gy er which an impenetrable veil is oast, to tfip lot of which, even if it seem to pg one of jyure suffering, we can dimly guess rhe sigqir iC ance. If God offered ps fps choice between. 4 prolonged earthly lot and a sudden plunge into the life beyond, be would show ua into what kind of life beyond we were e«nting to pass, instead of merely hiding from us as a forbidden mystery into ti>» secret ot which, until bis decree corns*, Wia are not permitted lo peed. It a man chooses between staying at home and emigration, be rb ooees between two classes of duties of wfeich if e can compute the probable coattqueffcts. If ho chooses bslwfish staying

at home and a perilous Arctic voyage, again he chooses between two classes of duties in either of which he may render eminent services to his fellow-men, and only has to estimate for which of the two classes of services he seems to himself the better fitted. But if he chooses between life and voluntary death, he chooses between a class of duties and sufferings which he so far understands, that he knows in what spirit they ought to be discharged and borne, and a class of duties and sufferings of which he knows nothing at all except that they are not laid before him as an alternative on which his conscience can decide whether he should undertake them or not. A man who voluntarily dashes into the next life without leave, is like a horseman who, out of pure self-will, leaps a wall without being able to conjecture whether or not on the other side there be a precipice or greensward. Professing to believe in God’s providence, he yet goes where he cannot even pretend that it guides him, since it gives him no vision of duty on the hither side, We refer, now, of course, to the the mere theist, the earnest believer in God’s providence who is not also a believer in Christ’s revelation. To any one who is the latter as well as the former, suicide must be a still more deliberate act of rebellion, since the whole genius ot Christ's religion teaches that in willing suffering there is some mysterious virtue, from which, when we are led to it by the providence of God, it is sheer impiety to shrink ; and certainly, if suicide be not a deliberate shrinking from suffering, it is an utterly unintelligible act, of which no account at all can be given, least of all an account consistent in any fashion of submissiveness to the holy will which, as it has brought us into this world, can alone be safely trusted to sanction our passing out of it.