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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCI «TY
Atheism
AND
A Reply
SUICIDE.
to
ALFRED TENNYSON, Poet Laureate.
BY
G-. W. FOOTE.
------- ♦-------
Mr. Tennyson has written some fine poetry in his old age,
and he has also written a good deal of trash. Most of the
latter has appeared in the hospitable columns of the Nine
teenth Century. Mr. James Knowles, the editor of that
magazine, is an excellent man of business and knows what
takes with the British public. He is fully aware that Mr.
Tennyson is the popular poet of the day, and with com
mendable sagacity, he not only accepts the poet-laureate’s
verses whenever he can get them, but always prints them in
the largest type. Mr. Tennyson opened the first number
of his magazine with a weak sonnet, in which men like Pro
fessor Clifford were alluded to as seekers of hope “ in sunless
gulfs of doubt.” That little germ has developed into the
longer poem on “Despair” that appears in the current
number of the Nineteenth Century.
The critics have lauded this poem. Nothing else could be
expected of them. Mr. Tennyson is the popular poet, the
household poet, the Christian poet, and scarcely a critic dares
give him aught but unstinted praise. The ordinary gentle
men of the press write to order; they describe Mr. Tenny
son’s poetry as they describe Mr. Irving’s acting; they are
fettered by great, and especially by fashionable reputations ;
and when the publi? has settled who are its favorites they
never resist its verdict but simply flow with the stream. In
the course of time there grows up a sanctified cant of
criticism. If you are rash enough to doubt the favorite’s
greatness, you are looked upon as a common-place person
incapable of appreciating genius. If you object to the
popular poet’s intellectual ideas, you are rebuked for not
seeing that he is divinely inspired. Yet it is surely indis
putable that ideas are large or small, true or false, whether
they are expressed in verse or in prose. When poets con
descend to argue they must be held amenable to the laws of
reason. The right divine of kings to govern wrong is an
exploded idea, and the right divine of poets to reason wrong
should share the same fate.
�2
Mr. Tennyson’s poem is not too intelligible, and with a
proper appreciation of this he has told the gist of the story
in a kind of “ argument.”
“ A man and his wife having lost faith in a God, and hope of a
life to come, and being utterly miserable in this, resolved to end
themselves by drowning. The woman is drowned, but the man
is rescued by a minister of the sect he had abandoned.”
Now Mr. Tennyson has not worked fairly on these lines.
The question “ Does Atheism, as such, incline men to self
destruction ?” is not touched. The Atheist husband of
“ Despair” loses more than belief in God and hope of a life
to come. His wife suffers from a malady only curable, if at
all, by the surgeon’s knife. His eldest son has forged his
name and ruined him, while it is hinted that another son has
sunk to a still worse depth of vice. And he describes him
self as “ a life without sun, without health, without hope,
without any delight.” All this is very inartistic. An
Atheist under such a burden of trouble might commit suicide
just as a Christian might. Dr. Newman well says that by
a judicious selection of facts you may prove anything, and
Mr. Tennyson has judiciously selected his facts. He could
not kill his hero with Atheism, and so he brings in bad
health, a diseased wife, cruel and criminal children, and a
ruined home. Any one of these might prompt to suicide,
without the introduction of Atheism at all.
Mr. Tennyson’s lack of art in this poem goes still farther.
He makes the husband and wife drown themselves theatri
cally. They walk out into the breakers near a lighthouse.
This is mere melodrama. Why did they not take poison
and die in each other’s arms ? The only answer is that Mr.
Tennyson wanted to use that lighthouse, and as he could not
bring the lighthouse to them he took them to the lighthouse.
He wished to make the husband think to himself as he
looked at its rolling eyes—
“Does it matter how many they saved? We are all of us
wreck’d at last.”
This is an old trick of Mr. Tennyson’s. He is always
making his wonderful and vivid perceptions of external
nature compensate for his lack of spiritual insight and
power.
The melodrama of “ Despair ” is continued to the end.
The wife is successfully drowned as she was not required
any further in the poem, but the husband is rescued by (of
all men in the world!) the minister of the chapel he had
�3
forsaken. He loaths and despises this preacher, yet he tells
him all his domestic secrets and reveals to him all his
motives. Nay more, he wastes a great of denunciation on
his rescuer, and vehemently protests his intention to do for
himself despite his watcher’s “lynx-eyes.” Why all this
pother? Earnest suicides are usually reserved and very
rarely make a noise. Why not hold his tongue and quietly
seize the first opportunity ? But Mr. Tennyson’s heroes are
generally infirm of purpose. He can make his characters
talk, but he cannot make them act.
Another defect of Mr. Tennyson’s heroes is their abnormal
self-consciousness. The hero of “ Maud ” rants about him
self until we begin to hope that the Crimea will really
settle him. The hero of “ Locksley Hall” is a selfish cad
who poses through every line of faultless eloquence, until at
last we suspect that “ cousin Amy ” has not met the worst
fate which could befall her. And the hero of “ Despair ”
is little better. After powerfully describing the walk with
his wife to the breaker’s edge of foam, he says that they
kissed and bade each other eternal farewell. There he
should have stopped. But he must go on with—
“ Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began!
Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man ! ”
This little speculation could not be verified or disproved. It
is one which selfish people usually entertain. They nearly
always think their own sorrows the greatest the world ever
saw. Fortunately, although it may be news to Mr. Tenny
son, all Atheists are not of that kind. Some of them, at
least, are capable of the heroic joys of life, and of con
suming their personal sorrows in the fire of enthusiasm for
lofty and unselfish aims.
Mr. Tennyson should remember the sad end of Brutus in
“Julius Caesar.” Perhaps he does, for some of his language
seems borrowed from it. Brutus has lost what he most
values. His country’s liberties, for which he has fought
and sacrificed all, are lost, and his noble wife has killed her
self in a frenzy of grief. He kills himself too rather than
witness the dishonor of Rome and minister to the usurper’s
pride. But he does not pule and whine. He also bids his
dearest left adieu—
“ For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius !
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.”
And Cassius replies in the same magnanimous vein. There
�4
is a large and noble spirit which can face even suicide with
dignity and without repining.
So infected with selfishness is Mr. Tennyson’s Atheist
that he doubts the utility of virtue—
“ Does it matter so much whether crown’d for a virtue, or
hang’d for a crime ? ”
Yes, it does matter; or why does he cry out against his
son’s wickedness ? If the young man’s crime “ killed his
mother almost,” other people’s crime injures mankind, and
that is its condemnation. The real Atheist has his moral
creed founded on fact instead of fancy, and therefore, when
things go wrong with him, he does not rail against virtue.
He knows it to be good in the long run to the human family
whatever may be his own fate.
The hero of “Despair” had evidently been a Calvinist.
He reminds the minister of his having “ bawled the dark
side of his faith, and a God of eternal rage.” And he
exclaims—
“What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us
so well ?
Infinite wickedness rather that made everlasting Hell,
Made us, foreknew us, foredoom’d us, and does what he will
with his own;
Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan !
Hell? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been
told,
The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn
for his gold,
And so there were Hell for ever! but were there a God as you
say,
His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish’d
away.”
Now Calvinism is certainly not the creed any man could
regret to find untrue. And to our mind a man who could
live for years in the belief that the evils of this life are
ordained by God, and will be followed by an ordained hell
in the next life, is not likely to destroy himself when he finds
that the universe has no jailer and that all the evils of this
life end with it.
The man and his wife turn from the “ dark fatalist
creed ” to the growing dawn
“ When the light of a Sun that was coming would scatter the
ghosts of the Past,
And the cramping creeds that had madden’d the peoples would
vanish at last.”
�5
But when the dawn comes, they find that they have “ past
from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day.”
They are without a real God, for what deity remains is only
a cloud of smoke instead of a pillar of fire. Darwinism
they find to be very cold comfort, and they wail over them
selves as “poor orphans of nothing,” which is a comical
phrase, and one which we defy Mr. Tennyson or anybody
else to explain. If the Poet Laureate thinks that Darwinian
Atheists go about bemoaning themselves as poor orphans, he
is very much mistaken. He had better study them a little
before writing about them again. They are quite content
to remain without a celestial father. Earthly parents are
enough for them, earthly brothers and sisters, earthly wives,
and earthly friends. And most of them deem the grasp of
a father’s hand, and the loving smile on a mother’s face,
worth more than all the heavenly parentage they are satisfied
to lack.
Mr. Tennyson’s husband and wife, being utterly forlorn,
resolve to drown themselves, and the husband gives their
justication:—
“ Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of
pain
If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain,
And the homeless planet at length will be wheel’d thro’ the
silence of space,
Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race,
When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother
worm will have fled
From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth
that is dead ? ”
Now all this will no doubt happen. Many millions of years
hence this world will be used-up like the moon; and there
fore, according to Mr. Tennyson’s argument, we should
commit suicide rather than put up with the toothache. It
will be all the same in the end. True ; but it is a long
while to the end. And people who act on Mr. Tennyson’s
principle must either forget this, or they must resemble the
man who refused to eat his dinner unless he had the
guarantee of a good dinner for ever and ever, with a dessert
by way of Amen.
Elsewhere they express pity for others as well as for them
selves—
“ Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power,
And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower;
Pity for all that suffers on land or in air, or the deep,
And pity for our own selves till we long’d for eternal sleep.”
�6
Mr. Tennyson may well make his Atheist husband say “ for
we leaned to the darker side.” This is an earth without a
flower! In every sense it is untrue. There are flowers of
beauty in the natural world, and flowers of greater beauty
in the human garden, despite the weeds. This suicidal pair
are fond of what Mr. Tennyson has himself called “the
falsehood of extremes.”
Sincere pessimists do not advocate suicide. Schopenhauer
himself condemns it as a superlative act of egoism. If here
and there a pessimist destroys himself, how can that make
things better for the masses who are governed by instinct
and not by metaphysics ? Mr. Tennyson does not see that
the most confirmed pessimist may, like George Eliot, believe
in Meliorism ; that is, not in perfection, but in improvement.
Nature, we may be sure, will never produce a race of beings
with a general taste for suicide; and it is therefore the duty
of those who deplore the ineradicable evils of life, to stay
with their brethren and to do their share towards improving
the common lot. If they cannot really make life happier,
they may at least make it less miserable, which is very much
the same thing.
Has Mr. Tennyson been reading that grand and powerful
poem of Mr. James Thomson’s, and is “ Despair ” the result?
If so, it is a poor outcome of such a majestic influence.
Mr. Tennyson has misread that great poem. Its author has
his joyous as well as his sombre moods, and he has himself
indicated that it does not cover the whole truth. Pessimists,
too, are not so stupid as to think that the extinction of a
few philosophers will affect the general life, or that a
universal principle of metaphysics can determine an isolated
case. They know also that philosophy will never resist
Nature or turn her set course. They see that she is enor
mously fecund, and is able to spawn forth life enough to
outlast all opposition, with enough instinct of self-preserva
tion to defy all the hostility of sages. And it is a note
worthy fact that the chief pessimists of our century have
not courted death themselves except in verse. Schopen
hauer lived to seventy-two ; Hartmann is one of the happiest
men in Germany; Leopardi died of disease ; and the author
of “The City of Dreadful Night’’has not yet committed
suicide and probably never will. It is one thing to believe
that, considered universally, life is a mistake, and quite
another thing to cut one’s own throat. The utmost that
even Schopenhauer suggested in the way of carrying out his
principles, was that when the human race had become far
�7
more intellectual and moral, and far less volitional and
egoistic, it would cease to propagate itself and so reaeh.
Nirvana. Whoever expects that to happen has a very farreaching faith. If the sky falls we shall of course catch
larks, but when will it fall ?
Atheists, however, are not necessarily pessimists, and in
fact few of them are so. Most of them believe that a large
portion of the world’s evil is removable, being merely the
result of ignorance and superstition. Mr. Tennyson might
have seen from Shelley’s writings that an Athest may
cherish the noblest hopes of progress. Perhaps he would
reply that Shelley was not an Atheist, but few will agree
with him who have read the original editions of that glorious
poet and the very emphatic statements of his friend Trelawny.
Does Atheism prompt men to suicide ? That is the
question. Mr. Tennyson appears to think that if it does
not it should. We cannot, however, argue against a mere
dictum. The question is one of fact, and the best way to
answer it is to appeal to statistics. Atheists do not seem
prone to suicide. So far as we know no prominent Atheist
has taken his own life during the whole of this century.
But let us go farther. There has recently been published
an erudite work * on “ Suicide, Ancient and Modern,” by
A. Legoyt, of Paris. He has given official tables of the
reasons assigned for suicides in most of the countries of
Europe; and although religious mania is among these
causes, Atheism is not. This dreadful incitement to self
destruction has not yet found its way into the officia
statistics even of Germany or of France, where Atheist
abound I
Suicides have largely increased during the last twenty
years. In England, for instance, while from 1865 to 1876
the population increased 14-6 per cent., suicides increased
27T per cent. In France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Swit
zerland and Belgium the increase is still more alarming.
But during the same period lunacy has wonderfully in
creased ; and the truth is that both are caused by the everincreasing velocity and complexity of modern life, which
makes greater demands on our cerebral power than we are
able to answer. By-and-bye this will rectify itself through
* Ze /Swicicfe, Ancien et Moderne. Etude Historique, Philosophique
Morale et Statistique. Par A. Lïgott. Paris : A. Drouin.
�8
natural selection, but for the present our brains are not
strong enough for their sudden access of work. Hence the
increase of nervous derangement, lunacy, and suicide.
But it may be urged that religion keeps down the number
of suicides which would be still more plentiful without it.
That, however, is a mere matter of opinion, which can
hardly be verified or disproved. Religion does not restrain
those who do commit suicide, and that fact outweighs all
the fine talk about its virtue in other cases.
Some Christian apologists have made much capital out of
George Jacob Holyoake’s meditation on suicide in Gloucester
jail, when he was imprisoned for “ blasphemy,” or in other
words, for having opinions of his own on the subject of
religion. Mr. Holyoake’s mental torture was great. His wife
was in want, and his favorite daughter died while he was in
prison. Fearing that his reason might forsake him, and
being resolved that the Christian bigotry which had made
him suffer should never reduce him to an object of its derision,
he prepared the means of ending his life if the worst should
happen. “ See,” say these charitable Christians, “ what a
feeble support Atheism is in the hour of need! Nothing
but belief in Christ can enable us to bear the troubles of life.”
But our answer is that Mr. Holyoake did not commit suicide
after all; while, on the other hand, if we may judge by our
own notes during the past six months, one parson cuts his
throat, or hangs, or drowns, or poisons himself, on an
average every month.
Recurring finally to Mr. Tennyson, we say that his poem
is a failure. He does not understand Atheism, and he fails
to appreciate either its meaning or its hope. We trust that
he will afflict us with no more poetical abortions like this,
but give us only the proper fruit of his genius, and leave
the task of holding up Atheists as a frightful example to
the small fry of the pulpit and the religious press.
November 14iA, 1881.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
London : Fbeethought Publishing Company, 28, Stonecutter Street,
Farringdon Street, E.C.
�
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Atheism and suicide : a reply to Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 8 p. ; 18 cm.
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Foote, George W., 1843-1886
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1881
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Freethought Publishing Company
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Atheism
Suicide
Ethics
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Atheism and suicide : a reply to Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Alfred Tennyson
Atheism
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Suicide
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IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
AND
LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL.
A
N EW
EDI TION.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
London:
THE PIONEER PRESS, 2 NEWCASTLE ST., E.C.
1906
�[Colonel Ingersoll’s letter on “Is Suicide a
Sin ? ” was written for the New York World, in
August 1894. Many replies to it appeared in that
journal, one of which was by Monsignor Ducey, a
dignitary of the Romish Church in America. At the
desire of the Editor, Colonel Ingersoll wound up the
controversy with a general reply to his critics, under
the heading of “ Last Words on Suicide.”]
�£>2>70'
IS SUICIDE A SIN?
—•—
I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or
not. If it is, then there must be, on the average, more
trouble, more sorrow, more failure, and, consequently,
more people are driven to despair. In civilised life
there is a great struggle, great competition, and many
fail. To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at
sea. In the country a man has friends. He can get a
little credit, a little help; but in the city it is different.
The man is lost in the multitude. In the roar of the
streets his cry is not heard. Death becomes his only
friend. Death promises relief from want, from hunger
and pain; and so the poor wretch lays down his burden,
dashes it from his shoulders, and falls asleep.
To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is
that so many endure and suffer to the natural end ; that
so many nurse the spark of life in huts and prisons ;
keep it and guard it through years of misery and want;
support it by beggary, by eating the crust found in the
gutter, and to whom it only gives days of weariness and
nights of fear and dread. Why should the man, sitting
amid the wreck of all he had—the loved ones dead;
friends lost—seek to lengthen, to preserve his life ?
What can the future have for him ?
Under many circumstances a man has the right to
kill himself. When life is of no value to him, when he
can be of no real assistance to others, why should a
man continue ? When he is of no benefit, when he is a
burden to those he loves, why should he remain ? The
old idea was that God made us and placed us here for a
purpose, and that it was our duty to remain until he
�4
IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
called us. The world is out-growing this absurdity.
What pleasure can it give God to see a man devoured
by a cancer ? To see the quivering flesh slowly eaten ?
To see the nerves throbbing with pain ? Is this a
festival for God ? Why should the poor wretch stay
and suffer ? A little morphine would give him sleep ;
the agony would be forgotten and he would pass un
consciously from happy dreams to painless death.
If God determines all births and deaths, of what use
is medicine, and why should doctors defy, with pills and
powders, the decrees of God ? No one, except a few
insane, act now according to this childish superstition.
Why should a man, surrounded by flames in the midst
of a burning building, from which there is no escape,
hesitate to put a bullet through his brain or a dagger in
his heart ? Would it give God pleasure to see him
burn ? When did the man lose the right of selfdefence ?
So, when a man has committed some awful crime,
why should he stay and ruin his family and friends ?
Why should he add to the injury ? Why should he
live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights
of others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears ?
Why should a man, sentenced to imprisonment for
life, hesitate to still his heart ? The grave is better than
the cell. Sleep is sweeter than the ache of toil. The
dead have no master.
So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted—the door of
home dosed against her, the faces of friends averted, no
hand that will help, no eye that will soften with pity,
the future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes of
dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts
like clouds broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by
serpents of remorse, flying from horrors too great to
bear—rushes with joy through the welcome door of
death.
�IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
5
Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justi
fiable suicide—cases in which not to end life would be a
mistake, sometimes almost a crime.
As to the necessity of death, each must decide fo
himself. And if a man honestly decides that death is
best—best for him and others—and acts upon the
decision, why should he be blamed ?
Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical
coward. He may have lacked moral courage, but not
physical. It may be said that some men fight duels
because they are afraid to decline. They are between
two fires—the chance of death and the certainty of
dishonor, and they take the chance of death. So the
Christian martyrs were, according to their belief between
two fires—the flames of the fagot that could burn but
for a few moments and the fires of God that were
eternal. And they chose the flames of the fagot.
Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear
all the pains and pangs that nerves can feel rather than
die cannot afford to call the suicide a coward. It does
not seem to me that Brutus was a coward, or that
Seneca was. Surely Antony had nothing left to live for.
Cato was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So
with hundreds of others who felt that they had reached
the end—that the journey was done, the voyage was
over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain that the
man who commits suicide, who “ does the thing that
stops all other deeds, that shackles accident and bolts up
change,” is not lacking in physical courage.
If men had the courage, they would not linger in
prisons, in almshouses, in hospitals; they would not
bear the pangs of incurable disease, the stains of dis
honor ; they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
and hunger; neither would they wear the chain of
slavery. All this can be accounted for only by the fear
of death or “ of something after.”
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IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life,
had no fear. He knew that he could defeat the emperor.
He knew that “ at the bottom of every river, in the coil
of every rope, on the point of every dagger, Liberty sat
and smiled.” He knew that it was his own fault if he
allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy.
He said : “ There is this blessing, that while life has but
one entrance, it has exits innumerable ; and, as I choose
the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail,
so will I choose the time and manner of my death.”
To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.
Under the Roman law persons found guilty of certain
offences were not only destroyed, but their blood was
polluted, and their children became outcasts. If, how
ever, they died before conviction, their children were
saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes.
Certainly they were not cowards. Although guilty of
great crimes, they had enough of honor, of manhood,
left to save their innocent children. This was not
cowardice.
Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity.
Men lose their property. The fear of the future over
powers them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise
and balance, and, in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill
themselves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart
—the light fading from their lives—seek the refuge of
death.
Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways
—who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash
themselves from towers and roofs, take poisons that
torture like the rack—such persons must be insane. But
those who take the facts into account, who weigh the
arguments for and against, and who decide that death is
best—the only good—and then resort to reasonable
means, may be, so far as I can see, in full possession of
their minds.
�IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
7
Life is not the same to all—to some a blessing, to
some a curse, to some not much in any way. Some
leave it with unspeakable regret, some with the keenest
joy, and some with indifference.
Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing
upon the number of suicides. The fear of God, of
judgment, of eternal pain, will stay the hand, and people
so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural
death. A belief in eternal agony beyond the grave will
cause such believers to suffer the pangs of this life.
When there is no fear of the future, when death is
believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have less hesitation
about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox
religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused
parents to murder their children, and many thousands to
destroy themselves and others.
It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox
believers who kill themselves must be insane, and to
such a degree that their belief is forgotten. God and
hell are out of their minds.
I am satisfied that many who commit suicide are
insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of insanity, and
many are perfectly sane.
The law we have in this State, making it a crime to
attempt suicide, is cruel and absurd, and calculated to
increase the number of successful suicides. When a
man has suffered so much, when he has been so perse
cuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and
sleep of death, why should the state add to the sufferings
of that man ? A man seeking death, knowing that he
will be punished if he fails, will take extra pains and
precautions to make death certain.
This law was born of superstition, passed by thought
lessness, and enforced by ignorance and cruelty.
When the house of life becomes a prison, when the
horizon has shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when
�8
IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
the convict longs for the liberty of death, why should the
effort to escape be regarded as a crime ?
Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view.
I do not take gods, heavens, and hells into account. My
horizon is the known, and my estimate of life is based
upon what I know of life here in this world. People
should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings, or
for other worlds, or the hopes and fears of some future
state. Our joys, our sufferings, and our duties are
here.
The law of New York about the attempt to commit
suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal. Both
are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who
have lost all fear of death care nothing for law and its
penalties. Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.
We should remember that nothing happens but the
natural. Back of every suicide and every attempt to
commit suicide is the natural and efficient cause.
Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts
touch each other. There is no space between—no room
for chance. Given a certain heart and brain, certain
conditions, and suicide is the necessary result. If we
wish to prevent suicide, we must change conditions.
We must, by education, by invention, by art, by civili
sation, add to the value of the average life. We must
cultivate the brain and heart—do away with false pride
and false modesty. We must become generous enough
to help our fellows without degrading them. We must
make industry—useful work of all kinds—honorable.
We must mingle a little affection with our charity—a
little fellowship. We should allow those who have
sinned to really reform. We should not think only of
what the wicked have done, but we should think of
what we have wanted to do. People do not hate the
sick. Why should they despise the mentally weak—
the diseased in brain ?
�IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
9
Our actions are the fruit, the result of circumstances
—of conditions—and we do as we must. This great
truth should fill the heart with pity for the failures of
our race.
Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce
the suicide; that in old times they buried him where
the roads crossed, and drove a stake through his body.
They took his property from his children and gave it to
the State.
If Christians would only think, they would see that
orthodox religion rests upon suicide—that man was
redeemed by suicide, and that, without suicide, the
whole world would have been lost.
If Christ was God, then he had the power to protect
himself from the Jews without hurting them. But,
instead of using his power, he allowed them to take his
life.
If a strong man should allow a few little children to
hack him to death with knives, when he could easily
have brushed them aside, would we not say that he
committed suicide ?
There is no escape. If Christ was in fact God, and
allowed the Jews to kill him, then he consented to his
own death—refused, though perfectly able, to defend and
protect himself, and was, in fact, a suicide.
We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition.
As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and
sorrow, agony and crime, men and women will untie
life’s knot and seek the peace of death.
To the hopelessly imprisoned—to the dishonored and
despised—to those who have failed, who have no future,
no hope—to the abandoned, the broken-hearted, to those
who are only remnants and fragments of men and women
—how consoling, how enchanting, is the thought of death!
And even to the most fortunate death at last is a
welcome deliverer. Death is as natural and as merciful
�IO
IS SUICIDE A SIN
as life. When we have journeyed long—when we are
weary—when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for
the cool kisses of the night—when the senses are dull—when the pulse is faint and low—when the mists gather
on the mirror of memory—when the past is almost for
gotten, the present hardly perceived—when the future
has but empty hands—death is as welcome as a strain
of music.
After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next
to eternal happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the
cool earth, disturbed by no dream, by no thought, by no
pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and for ever.
The wonder is that so many live, that, in spite of rags
and want, in spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and
pain, they limp and stagger and crawl beneath their
burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that so few
of the miserable are brave enough to die—that so many
are terrified by the “ something after death ”—by the
spectres and phantoms of superstition.
Most people are in love with life. How they cling to
it in the arctic snows—how they struggle in the waves
and currents of the sea—how they linger in famine—
how they fight disaster and despair ! On the crumbling
edge of death they keep the flag flying, and go down at
last full of hope and courage.
But many have not such natures. They cannot bear
defeat. They are disheartened by disaster. They lie
down on the field of conflict, and give the earth their
blood.
They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We
should not curse or blame—we should pity. On their
pallid faces our tears should fall.
One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate
wife, a charming and loving daughter, committed suicide,
He was a man of generous impulses. His heart was
loving and tender. He was conscientious, and so sensi
�IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
II
tive that he blamed himself for having done what at the
time he thought was wise and best. He was the victim
of his virtues. Let us be merciful in our judgments.
All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving
and the malignant, the conscientious' and the vicious, the
educated and the ignorant, actuated by many motives,
urged and pushed by circumstances and conditions—
sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion’s
storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of
insanity—raise their hands against themselves, and des
perately put out the light of life.
Those who attempt suicide should not be punished.
If they are insane, they should, if possible, be restored to
reason ; if sane, they should be reasoned with, calmed,
and assisted.
LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
First,—In the article written by me about suicide, and
published in the World, the ground was taken that “ under
many circumstances a man has a right to kill himself.”
This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen,
editors, and the writers of letters. These people contend
that the right of self-destruction does not, and cannot,
exist. They insist that life is the gift of God, and that
he only has the right to end the days of men ; that it is
our duty to bear the sorrows that he sends with grateful
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LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
patience. Some have denounced suicide as the worst
of crimes—worse than the murder of another.
The first question, then, is :—
Has a man, under any circumstances, the right to
kill himself ?
A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer; his
agony is intense, his suffering all that nerves can feel.
His life is slowly being taken. Is this the work of the
good God ? Did the compassionate God create the
cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of
this victim ?
This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination
to conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a
succession of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his
children, his friends, or society. Day after day he is
rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves
and put the brain to sleep.
Has he the right to render himself unconscious ? Is
it proper for him to take refuge in sleep ?
If there be a good God, I cannot believe that he takes
pleasure in the sufferings of men—that he gloats over
the agonies of his children. If there be a good God, he
will, to the extent of his power, lessen the evils of life.
So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer—
a burden to himself and others, useless in every way—
has the right to end his pain and pass through happy
sleep to dreamless rest.
But those who have answered me would say to this
man : “ It is your duty to be devoured. The good God
wishes you to suffer. Your life is the gift of God. You
hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it. The
cancer is the creation of God, and it is your duty to
furnish it with food.”
Take another case. A man is on a burning ship, the
crew and the rest of the passengers have escaped—gone
in the lifeboats—and he is left alone. In the wide horizon
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
13
there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot swim. If he
leaps into the sea, he drowns ; if he remains on the ship,
he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.
Those who have answered me, those who insist that
under no circumstances a man has the right to take his
life, would say to this man on the deck : “ Remain where
you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly Father
that you be clothed in flame, that you slowly roast, that
your eyes be scorched to blindness, and that you die
insane with pain. Your life is not your own, only the
agony is yours.”
I would say to this man : “ Do as you wish. If you
prefer drowning to burning, leap into the sea. Between
inevitable evils you have the right of choice. You can
help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be
burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by
choosing the easier death.”
Let us suppose another case :—
A man has been captured by savages in Central
Africa. He is about to be tortured to death. His
captors are going to thrust splinters of pine into his
flesh, and then set them on fire. He watches them as
they make the preparations. He knows what they are
about to do, and what he is about to suffer. There is
no hope of rescue—of help. He has a vial of poison.
He knows that he can take it, and in one moment pass
beyond their power, leaving to them only the dead body.
Is this man under obligation to keep his life because
God gave it until the savages, by torture, take it ? Are
the savages the agents of the good God ? Are they the
servants of the infinite ? Is it the duty of this man to
allow them to wrap his quivering body in a garment of
flame ? Has he no right to defend himself ? Is it the
will of God that he die by torture ? What would any
man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this ? Is
there room for discussion ?
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LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few
moments, escaped the tortures of savages, is it possible
that he would, in another world, be tortured for ever by
an infinite savage ?
Suppose another case: In the good old days when the
Inquisition flourished, when men loved their enemies
and murdered their friends, many frightful and ingenious
ways were devised to touch the nerves of pain.
Those who loved God, who had been “ born twice,”
would take a fellow man who had been convicted of
heresy, lay him upon the floor of a dungeon, secure his
arms and legs with chains, fasten him to the earth so
that he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening
downward, on his stomach, place in the vessel several
rats, then tie it securely to his body. Then these wor
shipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking food
and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.
Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture,
had within his hand a dagger, would it excite the wrath
of the “ good God ” if, with one quick stroke, he found
the protection of death ?
To this question there can be but one answer.
In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each
person would have the right to destroy himself. It does
not seem possible that the man was under obligation to
be devoured by cancer ; to remain upon the ship and
perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tor
tured to death by savages; to drop the dagger and
endure the “ mercies ” of the Church.
If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the
right to take their lives, then I was right when I said
that “ under many circumstances a man has a right to
kill himself.”
Second,—I denied that persons who killed themselves
were physical cowards. They may lack moral courage;
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
15
they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of
proportion ; but the man who plunges the dagger in his
heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
from some roof and dashes himself against the stones
beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward.
The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear
of death, and when that fear is not only gone, but in its
place is the desire to die, no matter by what means, it is
impossible that cowardice should exist. The suicide
wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the
very thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.
So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the
less, is not a coward, but a reasonable man.
It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with
himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly
there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no
physical cowardice.
Is the man who takes morphine, rather than be eaten
to death by a cancer, a coward ?
Is the man who leaps into the sea, rather than be
burned, a coward ?
Is the man who takes poison, rather than be tortured
to death by savages or “ Christians,” a coward ?
Third,—I also took the position that some suicides
were sane ; that they acted on their best judgment; and
that they were in full possession of their minds.
Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the
right to take his life, and if, under such circumstances,
he does take his life, then it cannot be said that he was
insane.
Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have
not only taken the ground that suicide is a crime, but
some of them have said that it is the greatest of crimes.
Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must have been
sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a
�i6
LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
criminal admit that he was sane. Under the law, an
insane person is incapable of committing a crime. All
the clergymen who have answered me, and who have
passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by
that assertion admitted that those who killed themselves
were sane.
They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert,
that “ some who have committed suicide were sane and
in full possession of their minds.”
It seems to me that these three propositions have been
demonstrated to be true : First, that under some circum
stances a man has the right to take his life ; second, that
the man who commits suicide is not a physical coward ;
and, third, that some who have committed suicide were
at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.
Fourth,—I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was
and is the foundation of the Christian religion.
I still insist that, if Christ were God, he had the power
to protect himself without injuring his assailants ; that,
having that power, it was his duty to use it; and that,
failing to use it, he consented to his own death, and was
guilty of suicide.
To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for
the redemption of man, and that he made an atonement
for the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption
and atonement are born of a belief in the “ fall of man,”
on account of the sins of our “ first parents,” and of the
declaration that “ without the shedding of blood there is
no remission of sin.” The foundation has crumbled.
No intelligent person now believes in the “ fall of man ”
—that our first parents were perfect, and that their
descendants grew worse and worse, at least until the
coming of Christ.
Intelligent men now believe that the general course of
the human race has been upward; that, while some
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
17
tribes and nations have gone backward and perished,
others have advanced; that the world is nearer civilised
to-day than ever before.
Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before
the dawn of history man was a poor, naked, cruel,
ignorant, and degraded savage, whose language consisted
of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and delight; that he
devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not all
the virtues, of the beasts ; that the journey from the den
to the home, the palace, has been long and painful,
through many centuries of suffering, of cruelty and war ;
through many ages of discovery, invention, self-sacrifice,
and thought.
Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on
which to rest. The idea that an infinite God, creator of
all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the
trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and
scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put
him to death that he might atone for the sins of
men and redeem a few believers from the consequences
of his own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and
natural brain.
In no mythology can anything more monstrously un
believable be found.
But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of
z his time because it was cruel and absurd ; if he endea/ vored to found a religion of kindness, of good deeds, to
take the place of heartlessness and ceremony ; and if,
rather than deny what he believed to be right and true,
he suffered death, then he was a noble man—a benefactor
of his race. But if he were God there was no need of
this. The Jews did not wish to kill God. If he had only
made himself known, all knees would have touched the
ground. If he were God, it required no heroism to die.
He knew that what we call death is but the opening of
the gates of eternal life. If he were God, there was no
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
self-sacrifice. He had no need to suffer pain. He could
have changed the crucifixion to a joy.
Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is
no escape from these conclusions—from these arguments;
and so, instead of attacking the arguments, they attack
the man who makes them.
Fifth,—I denounced the law of New York that makes
an attempt to commit suicide a crime.
It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that
he passionately longs for death should be pitied, instead
of punished—helped rather than imprisoned.
A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave
to toil, a woman without home, without friends, without
bread, with clasped hands, with tear-filled eyes, with
broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night, leaps
from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of
death. She is rescued by a kind, courageous man,
handed over to the authorities, indicted, tried, convicted,
clothed in a convict’s garb, and locked in a felon’s cell.
To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law
that only savages would enforce.
Sixth,—In this discussion a curious thing has happened..
For several centuries the clergy have declared that,
while infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad.
support, a wretched consolation, in the hour of death.
They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the
great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God
for mercy, surrounded by fiends, in the torments of
despair. Think of the thousands and thousands of clergy
men who have described the last agonies of Voltaire, who
died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes from
play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell
into his last sleep as serenely as a river, running between
green and shaded banks, reaches the sea; the despair of
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
19
Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the noblest
men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star
that meets the morning.
At the same time these ministers admitted that the
average murderer could meet death on the scaffold with
perfect serenity, and could smilingly ask the people, who
had gathered to see him killed, to meet him in heaven.
But the honest man who has expressed his honest
thoughts against the creed of the Church in power could
not die in peace. God would see to it that his last
moments should be filled with the insanity of fear—that
with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse,
the cry for pardon.
This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their
sermons answering me, declare that the Atheists, the
Freethinkers, have no fear of death—that to avoid some
little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly
and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said
that infidels believe that death is the end ; that it is a
dreamless sleep; that it is without pain ; that, therefore,
they have no fear, care nothing for gods, or heavens, or
hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit, nothing for
the Day of Judgment, and that when life becomes a
burden they carelessly throw it down.
The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit
suicide.
This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate
myself on having forced the clergy to contradict them
selves.
Seventh,—The clergy take the position that the
Atheist, the unbeliever, has no standard of morality—
that he can have no real conception of right and wrong.
They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one to
be moral or good unless he believes in some Being far
above himself.
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LASE WORDS ON SUICIDE.
In this connection we might ask how God can be
moral or good unless he believes in some Being superior
to himself.
What is morality ? It is the best thing to do under
the circumstances. What is the best thing to do under
the circumstances ? That which will increase the sum
of human happiness—or lessen it the least. Happiness
in its highest, noblest form, is the only good ; that which
increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral—
that which decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.
It is not hard for an Atheist—for an unbeliever—to
keep his hands out of the fire. He knowrs that burning
his hands will not increase his well-being, and he is
moral enough to keep them out of the flames.
So it may be said that each man acts according to his
intelligence—so far as what he considers his own good
is concerned. Sometimes he is swayed by passion, by
prejudice, by ignorance; but when he is really intelligent,
master of himself, he does what he believes is 'best for
him. If he is intelligent enough, he knows that what
is really good for him is. good for others—for all
the world.
It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the
supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of
right and wrong. Every man who has the capacity to
suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give the
same capacity to others, has within himself the natural
basis of all morality. The idea of morality was born
here, in this world, of the experience, the intelligence, of
mankind. Morality is not of supernatural origin. It
did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no belief in the
supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no
supernatural heavens or hells, to give it force and life.
Subjects who are governed by the threats and promises
of a king are merely slaves. They are not governed by
the ideal—by noble views of right and wrong. They
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
21
are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars
governed by rewards—by alms.
Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder
was just as criminal before as after the promulgation of
the Ten Commandments.
Eighth,—Many of the clergy, some editors, and
some writers of letters who have answered me have said
that suicide is the worst of crimes—that a man had
better murder somebody else than himself. One clergy
man gives as a reason for this statement that the suicide
dies in an act of sin, and, therefore, he had better kill
another person. Probably he would commit a less crime
if he would murder his wife or mother.
I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in
sin. To say that it is not as wicked to murder another
as yourself seems absurd. The man about to kill him
self wishes to die. Why is it better for him to kill
another man, who wishes to live ?
To my mind, it seems clear that you had better injure
yourself than another. Better be a spendthrift than a
thief. Better throw away your own money than steal
the money of another—better kill yourself if you wish
to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.
The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it
is one of the greatest possible crimes to rush into his
presence. It is wonderful how much they know about
God, and how little about their fellow men. ’Wonderful
the amount of their information about other worlds, and
how how limited their knowledge is of this.
There may or may not be an infinite Being. I neither
affirm nor deny. I am honest enough to say that I do
not know. I am candid enough to admit that the
question is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I
think I know as much on that subject as any human
being knows or ever knew, and that is—nothing. I do
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LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
not say that there is not another world, another life,
neither do I say that there is. I say that I do not know.
It seems to me that every sane and honest man must
say the same. But if there be an infinitely good God
and another world, then the infinitely good God will be
just as good to us in that world as he is in this. If this
infinitely good God loves his children in this world, he
will love them in another. If he loves a man when he
is alive, he will not hate him the instant he is dead.
If we are the children of an infinitely wise and
powerful God, he knew exactly what we would do—the
temptations that we could and could not withstand—
knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon
us ; knew under what circumstances we would take our
lives, and produced such circumstances himself. It is
perfectly apparent that there are many people incapable
by nature of bearing the burdens of life, incapable of
preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of
disaster, disease, and loss, and who, by failure, by mis
fortune and want, are driven to despair and insanity, in
whose darkened mind there comes, like a flash of light
ning in the night, the thought of death—a thought so
strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all
duties, all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught
remains except a fierce and wild desire to die. Thou
sands and thousands become moody, melancholy—brood
upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until reason
abdicates dnd frenzy takes possession of the soul. If
there be an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this
was known to him from the beginning, and he so created
things, established relations, put in operation causes and
effects, that all that has happened was the necessary
result of his own acts.
Ninth,—Nearly all who have tried to answer what I
said have been exceedingly careful to misquote me, and
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
23
then answer something that I never uttered. They have
declared that I have advised people who were in trouble,
somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told
men who have lost their money, who had failed in busi
ness, who were not in good health, to kill themselves at
once, without taking into consideration any duty that
they owed to wives, children, friends, or society.
No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle
alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert
his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he
can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he
can stand between wife and misery, between child and
want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty
to remain.
I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny
side of things, in bearing with fortitude the evils of life,
in struggling against adversity, in finding the fuel of
laughter even in disaster, in having confidence in to
morrow, in finding the pearl of joy amid the flints and
shards, and in changing, by the alchemy of patience,
even evil things to good. I believe in the gospel of cheer
fulness, of courage and good nature.
Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of
the world—of all that live. My anxieties are about this
life—this world. About the phantoms called gods and
their impossible hells I have no care, no fear.
The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I
wait. The immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor
deny. I hope—hope for all of the children of men. I
have never denied the existence of another world, nor the
immortality of the soul. For many years I have said
that the idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed
and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves
of hope and fear beating against the shores and rocks of
time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any
creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affec
�24
LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
tion, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the
mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love
kisses the lips of death.
What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity
of torture.
After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong.
People do not kill themselves on the advice of friends or
enemies. All wish to be happy, to enjoy life; all wish
for food and roof and raiment, for friends, and as long as
life gives joy the idea of self-destruction never enters the
human mind.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the
rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put
wages below the living point, the ministers who make
people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain ;
these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering, and
the helpless, down to death.
It will not do to say that “ God ” has appointed a time
for each to die. Of this there is, and there can be, no
evidence. There is no evidence that any god takes any
interest in the affairs of men—that any sides with the
right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues
the oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God,
through all ages, has allowed his friends, his worshipers,
to be imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by his enemies.
Such is the protection of God. Billions of prayers have
been uttered; has one been answered ? Who sends
plague, pestilence, and famine ? Who bids the earth
quake devour, and the volcano to overwhelm ?
Tenth,—Again, I say that it is wonderful to me that
so many men, so many women, endure and carry their
burdens to the natural end ; that so many, in spite of
“ age, ache, and penury,” guard with trembling hands
the spark of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to
the last; that the helpless wretches in poor-houses and
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE.
25
asylums cling to life; that the exiles in Siberia, loaded
with chains, scarred with the knout, live on; that the
incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom
the future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch
and clasp of death.
It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the
grave—a short journey. The suicide hastens, shortens
the path, loses the afternoon, the twilight, the dusk of
life’s day; loses what he does not want, what he cannot
bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of
madness, or in the calm of thought and choice, the
beleaguered soul finds the serenity of death.
Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them.
We know nothing of any realm that lies beyond the
horizon of the known, beyond the end of life. Let us
be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the
suffering, the despairing, the men and women hunted
and pursued by grief and shame, by misery and want,
by chance and fate, until their only friend is death.
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Is suicide a sin? and last words on suicide
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: New ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 25, [6] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Last words on suicide (p.11-25) is a general reply to Ingersoll's critics. Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. No. 73i in Stein checklist, but not seen by him. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
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1906
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N366
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Suicide
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NSS
Sin-Christianity
Suicide
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PDF Text
Text
NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
Words on Suicide
A REPLY TO THE CRITICS
♦
OF
“IS SUICIDE A SIN?”
'BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL.
■1
t
eprinted from the New York “ World.”)
•w-
*
Price Twopence.
*
I
LONDON:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1894.
�INTRODUCTION.
[Colonel Ingersoll’s letter to the New York World on
the question, “ Is Suicide a Sin ?” provoked a large number
of letters from all sorts and conditions of men—and women.
Some of them were very ^-conditioned, insulting the great
Freethinker they were incapable of answering. Colonel
Ingersoll, however, would not condescend to their level.
At the desire of the editor, he wound up the controversy,
which he did in the following letter.]
�LAST WORDS ON SUICIDE
First,—In the article written by me about suicide, and
published in the World, the ground was taken that “ under
many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself.”
This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen,
editors, and the writers of letters. These people contend
that the right of self-destruction does not, and cannot,
exist. They insist that life is the gift of God, and that he
only has the right to end the days of men ; that it is our
duty to bear the sorrows that he sends with grateful
patience. , Some have denounced suicide as the worst of
crimes—worse than the murder of another.
The first question, then, is :—
Has a man, under any circumstances, the right to kill
himself ?
A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer; his agony
is intense, his suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is
slowly being taken. Is this the work of the good God ?
Did the compassionate God create the cancer so that it
might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim 1
This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to
conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a
succession of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his
children, his friends, or society. Day after day he is
rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and
put the brain to sleep.
Has he the right to render himself unconscious ? Is it
proper for him to take refuge in sleep ?
If there be a good God, I cannot believe that he takes
pleasure in the sufferings of men—that he gloats over the
agonies of his children. If there be a good God, he will,
to the extent of his power, lessen the evils of life.
So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer—a
burden to himself and others, useless in every way—has
the right to end his pain and pass through happy sleep to
dreamless rest.
�( 4 )
But those who have answered me would say to this man :
“ It is your duty to be devoured. The good God -wishes
you to suffer. Your life is the gift of God. You hold it in
trust, and you have no right to end it. The cancer is the
creation ©f God, and it is your duty to furnish it with
food.”
Take another case. A man is on a burning ship, the
crew and the rest of the passengers have escaped—gone in
the lifeboats—and he is left alone. In the wide horizon
there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot swim. If he
leaps into the sea, he drowns; if he remains on the ship, he
burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.
Those who have answered me, those who insist that
under no circumstances a man has the right to take his
life, would say to this man on the deck : “ Remain where
you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly Father
that you be clothed in flame, that you slowly roast, that
your eyes be scorched to blindness, and that you die
insane with pain. Your life is not your own, only the
agony is yours.”
I would say to this man : “ Do as you wish. If you
prefer drowning to burning, leap into the sea. Between
inevitable evils you have the right of choice. You can
help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be
burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by
choosing the easier death.”
Let us suppose another case :—
A man has been captured by savages in Central Africa.
He is about to be tortured to death. His captors are
going to thrust splinters of pine into his flesh, and then set
them on fire. He watches them as they make the
preparations. He knows what they are about to do, and
what he is about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue—of
help. He has a vial of poison. He knows that he can
take it, and in one moment pass beyond their power,
leaving to them only the dead body.
Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God
gave it until the savages, by torture, take it ? Are the
savages the agents of the good God ? Are they the
servants of the infinite ? Is it the duty of this man to
allow them to wrap his quivering body in a garment of
flame ? Has he no right to defend himself ? Is it the will
�of God that he die by torture ? What would any man of
ordinary intelligence do in a case like this ? Is there room
for discussion ?
If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few
moments, escaped the tortures of savages, is it possible that
he would, in another world, be tortured for ever by an
infinite savage ?
Suppose another case : In the good old days when the
Inquisition flourished, when men loved their enemies and
murdered their friends, many frightful and ingenious ways
were devised to touch the nerves of pain.
Those who loved God, who had been “ born twice,”
would take a fellow man who had been convicted of heresy,
lay him upon the floor of a dungeon, secure his arms and
legs with chains, fasten him to the earth so that he could
not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his
stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely
to his body. Then these worshippers of God would wait
until the rats, seeking food and liberty, would gnaw through
the body of the victim.
Now, if a man, about to be subjected to this torture, had
within his hand a dagger, would it excite the wrath of
the “ good God ” if, with one quick stroke, he found the
protection of death ?
To this question there can be but one answer.
In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each
person would have the right to destroy himself. It does
not seem possible that the man was under obligation to be
devoured by cancer; to remain upon the ship and perish
in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to
death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the
“ mercies ” of the Church.
If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the
right to take their lives, then I was right when I said that
“under many circumstances a man has a right to kill
himself.”
Second,—I denied that persons who killed themselves
were physical cowards. They may lack moral courage ;
they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of
proportion; but the man who plunges the dagger in his
heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
�( 6 )
from some roof and dashes himself against the stones
beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward.
The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear
of death, and when that fear is not only gone, but in its
place is the desire to die, no matter by what means, it is
impossible that cowardice should exist. The suicide wants
the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very
thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.
So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less,
is not a coward, but a reasonable man.
It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with
himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly
there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no
physical cowardice.
Is the man who takes morphine, rather than be eaten
to death by a cancer, a coward 1
Is the man who leaps into the sea, rather than be burned,
a coward 1
Is the man who takes poison, rather than be tortured
to death by savages or “ Christians,” a coward ?
Third,—I also took the position that some suicides were
sane; that they acted on their best judgment; and that
they were in full possession of their minds.
Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right
to take his life, and if, under such circumstances, he does
take his life, then it cannot be said that he was insane.
Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have
not only taken the ground that suicide is a crime, but some
of them have said that it is the greatest of crimes. Now,
if it be a crime, then the suicide must have been sane.
So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal admit
that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is
incapable of committing a crime. All the clergymen who
have answered me, and who have passionately asserted that
suicide is a crime, have by that assertion admitted that
those who killed themselves were sane.
They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert,
that “ some who have committed suicide were sane and in
full possession of their minds.”
It seems to me that these three propositions have been
demonstrated to be true: First, that under some circum-
�( 7 )
stances a man has the right to take his life; second, that
the man who commits suicide is not a physical coward;
and, third, that some who have committed suicide were at
the time sane and in full possession of their minds.
Fourth,—I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and
is the foundation of the Christian religion.
I still insist that, if Christ were God, he had the power
to protect himself without injuring his assailants; that,
having that power, it was his duty to use it; and that,
failing to use it, he consented to his own death, and was
guilty of suicide.
To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for
the redemption of man, and that he made an atonement
for the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption
and atonement are born of a belief in the “ fall of man,”
on account of the sins of our “ first parents,” and of the
declaration that “ without the shedding of blood there is
no remission of sin.” The foundation has crumbled. No
intelligent person now believes in the “ fall of man ”—that
our first parents were perfect, and that their descendants
grew worse and worse, at least until the coming of Christ.
Intelligent men now believe that the general course of
the human race has been upward; that, while some tribes
and nations have gone backward and perished, others have
advanced; that the world is nearer civilised to-day than
ever before.
Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before
the dawn of history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant,
and degraded savage, whose language consisted of a few
sounds of terror, of hatred and delight; that he devoured
his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not all the virtues,
of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the home,
the palace, has been long and painful, through many
centuries of suffering, of cruelty and war; through many
ages of discovery, invention, self-sacrifice, and thought.
Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on
which to rest. The idea that an infinite God, creator of
all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade
of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and
allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put him to death that
he might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few
�( 8 )
believers from the consequences of his own wrath, can find
no lodgment in a good and natural brain.
In no mythology can anything more monstrously un
believable be found.
But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of
his time because it was cruel and absurd; if he endeavored
to found a religion of kindness, of good deeds, to take the
place of heartlessness and ceremony; and if, rather than
deny what he believed to be right and true, he suffered
death, then he was a noble man—a benefactor of his race.
But if he were God there was no need of this. The Jews
did not wish to kill God. If he had only made himself
known, all knees would have touched the ground. If he
were God, it required no heroism to die. He knew that
what we call death is but the opening of the gates of
eternal life. If he were God, there was no self-sacrifice.
He had no need to suffer pain. He could have changed
the crucifixion to a joy.
Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is
no escape from these conclusions—from these arguments ;
and so, instead of attacking the arguments, they attack the
man who makes them.
Fifth,—I denounced the law of New York that makes
an attempt to commit suicide a crime.
It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that
he passionately longs for death should be pitied, instead
of punished—helped rather than imprisoned.
A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to
toil, a woman without home, without friends, without bread,
with clasped hands, with tear-filled eyes, with broken words of
prayer, in the darkness of night, leaps from the dock, hoping,
longing for the tearless sleep of death. She is rescued by
a kind, courageous man, handed over to the authorities,
indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict’s garb, and
locked in a felon’s cell.
To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that
only savages would enforce.
Sixth,—In this discussion a curious thing has happened.
For several centuries the clergy have declared that, while
infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad support,
�( 9 )
a wretched consolation, in the Iwur of death. They have,
in spite of the truth, declared that all the great un
believers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy,
surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think
of the thousands and thousands of clergymen who have
•described the last agonies of Voltaire, who died as peace
fully as a happy child smilingly passes from play to
slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last
sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and
shaded banks, reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine,
one of the bravest, one of the noblest men, who met the
night of death untroubled as a star that meets the morning.
At the same time these ministers admitted that the
average murderer could meet death on the scaffold with
perfect serenity, and could smilingly ask the people, who
had gathered to see him killed, to meet him in heaven.
But the honest man who has expressed his honest
thoughts against the creed of the Church in power could
not die in peace. God would see to it that his last moments
should be filled with the insanity of fear—that with his
last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry
for pardon.
This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their
sermons answering me, declare that the Atheists, the Free
thinkers, have no fear of death—that to avoid some little
annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly and cheer
fully put out the, light of life. It is now said that infidels
believe that death is the end; that it is a dreamless sleep ;
that it is without pain ; that, therefore, they have no fear,
care nothing for gods, or heavens, or hells, nothing for the
threats of the pulpit, nothing for the Day of Judgment,
and that when life becomes a burden they carelessly throw
it down.
The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit
suicide.
This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate
myself on having forced the clergy to contradict them
selves.
Seventh,—The clergy take the position that the Atheist,
the unbeliever, has no standard of morality—that he can
have no real conception of right and wrong. They are of the
�( 10 )
opinion that it is impossible for one to be moral or good
unless he believes in some Being far above himself.
In this connection we might ask how God can be moral
or good unless he believes in some Being superior to him
self.
What is morality ? It is the best thing to do under the
circumstances. What is the best thing to do under the
circumstances 1 That which will increase the sum of
human happiness—or lessen it the least. Happiness in its
highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases
or preserves or creates happiness is moral—that which
decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.
It is not hard for an Atheist—for an unbeliever—to keep
his hands out of the fire. He knows that burning his hands
will not increase his well-being, and he is moral enough to
keep them out of the flames.
So it may be said that each man acts according to his
intelligence—so far as what he considers his own good is
concerned. Sometimes he is swayed by passion, by preju
dice, by ignorance; but when he is really intelligent,
master of himself, he does what he believes is best for him.
If he is intelligent enough, he knows that what is really
good for him is good for others—for all the world.
It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the
supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of right
and wrong. Every man who has the capacity to suffer and
erW> and has imagination enough to give the same
capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of
all morality. The idea of morality was born here, in this
world, of the experience, the intelligence of mankind.
Morality is not of supernatural origin. It did not fall
from the clouds, and it needs no belief in the supernatural,
no supernatural promises or threats, no supernatural
heavens or hells, to give it force and life. Subjects who
are governed by the threats and promises of a king are
merely slaves. They are not governed by the ideal—by
noble views of right and wrong. They are obedient
cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by
rewards—by alms.
Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder
was just as criminal before as after the promulgation of the
Ten Commandments.
�(11)
Eighth,—Many of the clergy, some editors, and some
writers of letters who have answered me have said that
suicide is the worst of crimes—that a man had better
murder somebody else than himself. One clergyman gives
as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in an act
of sin, and, therefore, he had better kill another person.
Probably he would commit a less crime if he would murder
his wife or mother.
I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in
sin. To say that it is not as wicked to murder another as
yourself seems absurd. The man about to kill himself
wishes to die. Why is it better for him to kill another
man, who wishes to live ?
To my mind, it seems clear that you had better injure
yourself than another. Better be a spendthrift than a
thief. Better throw away your own money than steal the
money of another—better kill yourself if you wish to die
than murder one whose life is full of joy.
The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is
one of the greatest possible crimes to rush into his presence.
It is wonderful how much they know about God, and how
little about their fellow men. Wonderful the amount of
their information about other worlds, and how limited thenknowledge is of this.
There may or may not be an infinite Being. I neither
affirm nor deny. I am honest enough to say that I do not
know. I am candid enough to admit that the question is
beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I think I know
as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever
knew, and that is—nothing. I do not say that there is
not another world, another life; neither do I say that
there is. I say that I do not know. It seems to me that
every sane and honest man must say the same. But if
there be an infinitely good God and another world, then
the infinitely good God will be just as good to us in that
world as he is in this. If this infinitely good God loves
his children in this world, he will love them in another.
If he loves a man when he is alive, he will not hate him
the instant he is dead.
If we are the children of an infinitely wise and powerful
God, he knew exactly what we would do—the temptations
that we could and could not withstand—knew exactly the
�( 12 )
effect that everything would have upon us ; knew under
what circumstances we would take our lives, and produced
such circumstances himself. It is perfectly apparent that
there are many people incapable by nature of bearing the
burdens of life, incapable of preserving their mental poise
in stress and strain of disaster, disease, and loss, and who,
by failure, by misfortune and want, are driven to despair
and insanity, in whose darkened minds there comes, like a
flash of lightning in the night, the thought of death—a
thought so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties
broken, all duties, all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and
naught remains except a fierce and wild desire to die.
Thousands and thousands become moody, melancholy—
brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until
reason abdicates and frenzy takes possession of the soul.
If there be an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this
was known to him from the beginning, and he so created
things, established relations, put in operation causes and
effects, that all that has happened was the necessary result
of his own acts.
Ninth,—Nearly all who have tried to answer what I
said have been exceedingly careful to misquote me, and
then answer something that I never uttered. They have
declared that I have advised people who were in trouble,
somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told
men who have lost their money, who had failed in business,
who were not in good health, to kill themselves at once,
without taking into consideration any duty that they owed
to wives, children, friends, or society.
No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle
alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert
his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he can
add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he can
stand between wife and misery, between child and want, as
long as he can be of use, it is his duty to remain.
I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny
side of things, in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in
struggling against adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter
even in disaster, in having confidence in to-morrow, in
finding the pearl of joy amid the flints and shards, and in
changing, by the alchemy of patience, even evil things to
�( 13 )
good. I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage
and good nature.
Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the
world—of all that live. My anxieties are about this life—
this world. About the phantoms called gods and their
impossible hells I have no care, no fear.
The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I wait.
The immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor deny. I
hope—hope for all of the children of men. I have never
denied the existence of another world, nor the immortality
of the soul. For many years I have said that the idea of
immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and flowed in the
human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear
beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was
not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any
religion. It was born of human affection, and it will
continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of
doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of
death.
What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of
torture.
After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong.
People do not kill themselves on the advice of friends or
enemies. All wish to be happy, to enjoy life ; all wish for
food and roof and raiment, for friends, and as long as life
gives joy the idea of self-destruction never enters the
human mind.
The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the
rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put
wages below the living point, the ministers who make
people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain ;
these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering, and
the helpless, down to death.
It will not do to say that “ God ” has appointed a time
for each to die. Of this there is, and there can be, no
evidence. There is no evidence that any god takes any
interest in the affairs of men—that any sides with the
right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues
the oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their God,
through all ages, has allowed his friends, his worshippers,
to be imprisoned, tortured, and murdered by his enemies.
Such is the protection of God. Billions of prayers have
�( 14 )
been uttered; has one been answered ? Who sends plague,
pestilence, and famine ? Who bids the earthquake devour’,
and the volcano to overwhelm ?
’
Tenth,—Again, I say that it is wonderful to me that
so many men, so many women, endure and carry their
burdens to the natural end ; that so many, in spite of “ age,
ache, and penury,” guard with trembling hands the spark
of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last;
that the helpless wretches in poor-houses and asylums’
cling to life j that the exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains,
scarred with the knout, live on; that the incurables, whose
every breath is a pang, and for whom the future has only
pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp of death.
It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the
grave—a short journey. The suicide hastens, shortens the
path, loses the afternoon, the twilight, the dusk of life’s
day ; loses what he does not want, what he cannot bear.
In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness, or
in the calm of thought and choice, the beleaguered soul
finds the serenity of death.
Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We
know nothing of any realm that lies beyond the horizon
of the known, beyond the end of life. Let us be honest
with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering, the
despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by
grief and shame, by misery and want, by chance and fate,
until their only friend is death.
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Last words on suicide : a reply to the critics
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 14 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Publisher's advertisements inside and on back cover. No. 73g in Stein checklist. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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R. Forder
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1894
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N367
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Suicide
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Text
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English
NSS
Sin-Christianity
Suicide
-
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NATIONAI. SECULAR SOCIETY-
IS SUICIDE A SIN ?
BY
COLONEL R. G. INGERSOLL.
WITH A REPLY BY
MONSIGNOR
DUCEY.
(Reprinted from the New York “ World.”)
Price Twopence.
LONDON:
R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
1894.
4
4
�[Colonel Ingersoll’s letter on “ Is Suic
a Sin ?” was
written for the New York World, in August, 1894. Many
replies to it appeared in that journal, one of which was by
Monsignor Ducey, a dignitary of the Romish Church in
America. In reprinting Ingersoll’s letter on this side of
the Atlantic, it has been thought advisable to include
Monsignor Ducky’s reply.]
�£□-7°°
NJ 3 £4-
IS SUICIDE A SIN?
I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or not.
Ifj it is, then there must be, on the average, more trouble,
more sorrow, more failure, and, consequently, more people
are driven to despair. In civilised life there is a great
struggle, great competition, and many fail. To fail in a
great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the country a
man has friends. He can get [a little credit, a little help;
but in the city it is different. The man is lost in the
multitude. In the roar of the streets his cry is not heard.
Death becomes his only friend. Death promises release
from want, from hunger and pain ; and so the poor wretch
lays down his burden, dashes it from his shoulders, and falls
asleep.
To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so
many endure and suffer to the natural end ; that so many
nurse the spark of life in huts and prisons; keep it and
guard it through years of misery and want; support it by
beggary, by eating the crust found in the gutter, and to
whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and
dread. Why should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all
he had—the loved ones dead, friends lost—seek to lengthen,
to preserve his life 1 What can the future have for him ?
Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill
himself. When life is of no value to him, when he can be of
no real assistance to others, why should a man continue ?
When he is of no benefit, when he is a burden to those he
loves, why should he remain ? The old idea was that God
made us and placed us here for a purpose, and that it was
�(4)
our duty to remain until he called us. The world is out
growing this absurdity. What pleasure can it give God to
see a man devoured by a cancer ? To see the quivering flesh
slowly eaten ? To see the nerves throbbing with pain ? Is
this a festival for God ? Why should the poor wretch stay
and suffer ? A little morphine would give him sleep; the
agony would be forgotten, and he would pass unconsciously
from happy dreams to painless death.
If God determines all births and deaths, of what use is
medicine, and why should doctors defy, with pills and
powders, the decrees of God ? No one, except a few insane,
act now according to this childish superstition. Why should
a man, surrounded by flames in the midst of a burning
building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a
bullet through his brain or a dagger in his heart ? Would
it give God pleasure to see him burn ? When did the man
lose the right of self-defence ?
So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why
should he stay and ruin his family and friends ? Why should
he add to the injury 1 Why should he live, filling his days
and nights, and the days and nights of others, with grief
and pain, with agony and tears ?
Why should a man, sentenced to imprisonment for life,
hesitate to still his heart? The grave is better than the
cell. Sleep is sweeter than the ache of toil. The dead have
no master.
So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted—the door of home
closed against her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that
will help, no eye that will soften with pity, the future an
abyss filled with monstrous shapes of dread and fear, her
mind racked by fragments of thoughts like clouds broken by
storm, pursued, surrounded by the serpents of remorse, flying
from horrors too great to bear—rushes with joy through the
welcome door of death.
Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable
�( 5 )
suicide—cases in which not to end life would be a mistake,
sometimes almost a crime.
As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself.
And if a man honestly decides that death is best—best for
him and others—and acts upon the decision, why should he
be blamed ?
Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical
coward. He may have lacked moral courage, but not
physical. It may be said that some men fight duels because
they are afraid to decline. They are between two fires—the
chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they
take the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were,
according to their belief, between two fires—the flames of
the fagot that could burn but for a few moments and the
fires of God that were eternal. And they chose the flames
of the fagot.
Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all
the pains and pangs that nerves can feel rather than die
cannot afford to call the suicide a coward. It does not seem
to me that Brutus was a coward, or that Seneca was. Surely
Antony had nothing left to live for. Cato was not a craven.
He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of others who
felt that they had reached the end—that the journey was
done, the voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It
seems certain that the man who commits suicide, who “ does
the thing that stops all other deeds, that shackles accident
and bolts up change,” is not lacking in physical courage.
If men had the courage, they would not linger in prisons,
in almshouses, in hospitals ; they would not bear the pangs
of incurable disease, the stains of dishonor; they would not
live in filth and want, in poverty and hunger; neither would
they wear the chain of slavery. All this can be accounted
for only by the fear of death or “of something after.”
Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had
no fear. He knew that he could defeat the emperor. He
�( 6 )
knew that “ at the bottom of every river, in the coil of every
rope, on the point of every dagger, Liberty sat and smiled.”
He knew that it was his own fault if he allowed himself to
be tortured to death by his enemy. He said : “ There is
this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has
exits innumerable ; and, as I choose the house in which I
live, the ship in which I will sail, so will I choose the time
and manner of my death.”
To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.
Under the Roman law persons found guilty of certain
offences were not only destroyed, but their blood' was
polluted, and their children became outcasts. If, however,
they died before conviction, their children were saved.
Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly
they were not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes,
they had enough of honor, of manhood, left to save their
innocent children. This was not cowardice.
Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity.
Men lose their property. The fear of the future overpowers
them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise and balance,
and, in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill themselves. The dis
appointed in love, broken in heart—the light fading from
their lives—seek the refuge of death.
Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways—
who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash them
selves from towers and roofs, take poisons that torture like
the rack—such persons must be insane. Butthose who take
the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and
against, and who decide that death is best—the only good—
and then resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can
see, in full possession of their minds.
Life is not the same to all—to some a blessing, to some a
curse, to some not much in any way. Some leave it with
unspeakable regret, some with the keenest joy, and some
with indifference.
�( 7 )
Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon
the number of suicides. The fear of God, of judgment, of
eternal pain, will stay the hand, and people so believing
will suffer here until relieved by natural death. A belief in
eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such believers to
suffer the pangs of this life. When there is no fear of the
future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men
have less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other
hand, orthodox religion has driven millions to insanity. It
has caused parents to murder their children, and many
thousands to destroy themselves and others.
It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers
who kill themselves must be insane, and to such a degree
that their belief is forgotten. God and hell are out of their
minds.
I am satisfied that many who commit suicide are insane,
many are in the twilight or dusk of insanity, and many are
perfectly sane.
The law we have in this State, making it a crime to
attempt suicide, is cruel and absurd, and calculated to
increase the number of successful suicides. When a man
has suffered so much, when he has been so persecuted and
pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that
man ? A man seeking death, knowing that he will be
punished if he fails, will take extra pains and precautions to
make death certain.
This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtless
ness, and enforced by ignorance and cruelty.
When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon
has shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when the convict
longs for the liberty of death, why should the effort to
escape be regarded as a crime 2
Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I
do not take gods, heavens, and hells into account. My
�( 8 )
horizon is the known, and my estimate of life is based upon
what I know of life here in this world. People should not
suffer for the sake of supernatural beings, or for other worlds,
or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our
sufferings, and our duties are here.
The law of New York about the attempt to commit suicide
and the law as to divorce are about equal. Both are idiotic.
Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who have lost all fear
of death care nothing for law and its penalties. Death is
liberty, absolute and eternal.
We should remember that nothing happens but the
natural. Back of every suicide and every attempt to
commit suicide is the natural and efficient cause. Nothing
happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each
other. There is no space between—no room for chance.
Given a certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and
suicide is the necessary result. If we wish to prevent suicide,
we must change conditions. We must, by education, by in
vention, by art, by civilisation, add to the value of the
average life. We must cultivate the brain and heart—do
away with false pride and false modesty. We must become
generous enough to help our fellows without degrading
hem. We must make industry—useful work of all kinds—
honorable. We must mingle a little affection with our
charity—a little fellowship. We should allow those who
have sinned to really reform. We should not think only of
what the wicked have done, but we should think of what
we have wanted to do. People do not hate the sick. Why
should they despise the mentally weak—the diseased in
brain ?
Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances—of
conditions—and we do as we must. This great truth should
fill the heart with pity for the failures of our race.
Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce
the suicide; that in old times they buried him where the
�( 9 )
roads crossed, and drove a stake through his body. They
took his property from his children and gave it to the State.
If Christians would only think, they would see that
orthodox religion rests upon suicide—that man was re
deemed by suicide, and that, without suicide, the whole
world would have been lost.
If Christ was God, then he had the power to protect him
self from the Jews without hurting them. But, instead of
using his power, he allowed them to take his life.
If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack
him to death with knives, when he could easily have
brushed them aside, would we not say that he committed
suicide ?
There is no escape. If Christ was in fact God, and allowed
the Jews to kill him, then he consented to his own death—
refused, though perfectly able, to defend and protect himself,
and was, in fact, a suicide.
We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition.
As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow,
agony and crime, men and women will untie life’s knot and
seek the peace of death.
To the hopelessly imprisoned—to the dishonored and
despised—to those who have failed, who have no future, no
hope—to the abandoned, the broken-hearted, to those who
are only remnants and fragments of men and women—how
consoling, how enchanting, is the thought of death !
And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome
deliverer. Death is as natural and as merciful as life.
When we have journeyed long—when we are weary—when
we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for the cool kisses of
the night—when the senses are dull—when the pulse is faint
and low—when the mists gather on the mirror of memory—
when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly per
ceived—when the future has but empty hands—death is as
welcome as a strain of music.
�( 10 )
After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next
to eternal happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool
earth, disturbed by no dream, by no thought, by no pain,
by no fear, unconscious of all and for ever.
The wonder is that so many live, that, in spite of rags and
want, in spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain,
they limp and stagger and crawl beneath their burdens to
the natural end. The wonder is that so few of the miserable
are brave enough to die—that so many are terrified by the
“ something after death ”—by the spectres and phantoms of
superstition.
Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in
the arctic snows—how they struggle in the waves and
currents of the sea—how they linger in famine—how they
fight disaster and despair ! On the crumbling edge of death
they keep the flag flying, and go down at last full of hope
and courage.
But many have not such natures. They cannot bear
defeat. They are disheartened by disaster. They lie down
on the field of conflict, and give the earth their blood.
They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should
not curse or blame—we should pity. On their pallid faces
our tears should fall.
One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate
wife, a charming and loving daughter, committed suicide.
He was a man of generous impulses. His heart was loving
and tender. He was conscientious, and so sensitive that he
blamed himself for having done what at the time he thought
was wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let
us be merciful in our judgments.
All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving
and the malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the
educated and the ignorant, actuated by many motives,
urged and pushed by circumstances and conditions—some
times in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion’s storm
�(11)
and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of insanity—
raise their hands against themselves, and desperately put
out the light of life.
Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If
they are insane, they should, if possible, be restored to
reason ; if sane, they should be reasoned with, calmed, and
assisted.
R. G. INGERSOLL.
MONSIGNOR DUCEY’S REPLY.
Colonel Ingersoll has asked, “Is Suicide a Sin?” I do
not know how Colonel Ingersoll can put such a question.
He does not believe in sin, for he ignores and denies the
existence of the supernatural; and sin is defined as a crime
against the law of God.
Many people are very severe against Colonel Ingersoll.
They seem to be unwilling to recognise that he has any
good qualities, for the reason that he is a professed Agnostic
and Atheist. I am willing to admit that Colonel Ingersoll
is a first-class know-nothing when he deals with anything
�( 12 )
supernatural; but I am unwilling to recognise Colonel
Ingersoll as a know-nothing when his sympathies are called
upon in the interest of suffering humanity. I know that
Colonel Ingersoll is a man of large sympathies, and that he
is most kindly disposed to relieve generously the afflicted
whose suffering is brought to his notice. I know this, not
from hearsay, but from numerous cases where I have been
called, and to the relief of which cases Colonel Ingersoll has
contributed with his mind, his heart, and most generously
from his pocket.
The knowledge of his conduct broke down my prejudice
against the man. When I reflected on the goodness of his
conduct I could not help giving to him my recognition and
sympathy ; but I give to him my unqualified condemnation
when he attempts the part of the destroying angel against
the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity.
I was once present at a public dinner where Colonel
Ingersoll was to be the speaker of the evening. The pre
siding officer and toastmaster came to me and asked : “ Will
you say a few words before Colonel Ingersoll ? He has
requested me to ask you to give him some inspiration.” I
smilingly answered : “ Colonel Ingersoll does not believe in
inspiration, and I absolutely refuse to give him intellectual
direction.” When the Colonel delivered his address he had
the good sense and the good taste not to offend the clergy.
There were two Presbyterian ministers at the principal
table, and we were fearing that the Colonel might give us a
little of the hell in which he did not believe, and force us
to make a scene for self-protection and retire from the
Colonel’s flames. We saved ourselves, and were saved by the
Colonel. But I had great fun with him, and so did the
audience, when I was asked to speak. The Colonel did not
have the chance to review my language. Now I shall im
perfectly review him as reported in the New York World.
Colonel Ingersoll regards life from a natural point of view.
�( 13 )
He says he does not take God’s heavens and hells into
account. His horizon is the known, and his estimate of life
is based upon what he knows of the life here—in this world.
He says that people should not suffer for the sake of the
supernatural beings or for other worlds, or the hopes and
fears of some future state, and that our joys and sufferings
and our duties are here. It seems to me that Colonel
Ingersoll’s great fault is that he is a destroyer, and not a
constructor. He robs poor humanity of the only hope that
gives it comfort and makes its afflicted existence endurable,
and, having robbed it of the bread of hope, he reaches out to
it the stone of despair.
Another bad point about the Colonel’s propagandism of
destruction is, that he always gives his interesting lectures
for a large financial retainer. Perhaps the good Colonel
spends this one or two or three thousand dollars a night,
that he is said to receive, for the benefit of the poor and
despairing, and not for the comfort and luxury of those who
are near and dear to him. The religion against which he
fights is not without its compassion and devotion to
humanity, and the suicide which he justifies is condemned
by that religion which holds out to humanity hope and
encouragement.
The JForM will, no doubt, be pleased to print the con
demnation which the Holy Father, Leo XIII., in his ency
clical on labor, passes on the trusts and monopolies of the
day, which have driven honest labor to the verge of despair
and suicide. Leo XIII. says: “ The elements of conflict
to-day are unmistakable. The growth of industry and the
surprising discoveries of science; the changed relations of
masters and workmen; the enormous fortunes of individuals,
the poverty of the masses, and the general moral dete
rioration cause great fear to every honest and thoughtful
man. The momentous seriousness of the present state of
things fills every mind with painful apprehension. . . . All
�( 14 )
agree, and there can be no question whatever that some
remedy must be found for the misery and wretchedness
which press so heavily at this moment on the large majority
of the very poor. . . . the concentration of so many
branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, so
that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay
upon the masses of the poor a yoke little better than slavery
itself.”
If Colonel Ingersoll and others whose chief aim seems to
be to pull down that reverence and religion which seeks
fearlessly to teach all men the obligations of justice would
spend the talent and time they devote to destruction to the
proper adjustment and construction of society upon equit
able bases, there would, in my judgment, be few temptations
to suicide, and only the insane and morally irresponsible
would flee from “ the ills they have and fly to others they
know not of.” If the Colonel would preach this doctrine of
justice and adjustment to the railroad wreckers and trust
corrupters who seek through the evil use of money to
increase their capital for luxurious indulgence, and to create
a society of despair among the honest and struggling brain
and brawn workers of humanity, I think he would be doing
a nobler work for his fellow man than contributing his
luminous brain as a capitalistic trust to rob his fellows of
the hope of a higher and happier realisation than they find
here below.
If death means oblivion, Colonel Ingersoll is right. Colonel
Ingersoll’s policy would make men cowards. A man might
abandon wife, children, and the obligations of justice to his
fellow man simply because he felt the pangs of disappoint
ment and suffering, and, freeing himself from his portion of
the burden, leave an additional burden to others.
As to the outcast who has abused every faculty of head
and heart, I cannot agree with the Colonel that he has a
right to take his life. I cannot agree with the Colonel, for
�(15)
I view natural and supernatural obligations, and the Colonel
has no regard for this view of the case.
Such a creature has, in my judgment, ceased to be a moral
agent, and I might say of him what I have heard of a
Yankee saying in a court of justice when asked* by the
presiding judge, “What do you think of this man’s moral
character 1” “ Well, yer honor, I don’t know nawthin’ about
his moral carrikter, but his immorals are first-class.” This
picture of the Colonel strikes me in the same way.
The Colonel’s classic historical examples are prescribed
in very bad chemicals. I don’t think his camera was in very
good order when he focussed the pictures. I do not think
that the cases of Seneca, Brutus, and Antony help his argu
ment. The historical reasons given for their self-destruction
convey no notion of heroic example, and I think the Colonel
has been most unhappy in presenting these creatures as
heroes. In naming Antony he left out Cleopatra. I pre
sume he was afraid to insult the memory of the classic Cato
by grouping him with two such immoral associates.
THOMAS J. DUCEY.
�Works by Colonel R. G. Ingersoll.
Some Mistakes of Moses. Why
The only complete edition in
England. Accurate as Colenso,
and fascinating as a novel. 132 pp.
Is. Superior paper, cloth Is. 6d.
Defence of Freethought.
A Five Hours’ Speech at the Trial
of C. B. Reynolds for Blasphemy.
t»d.
The Gods. 6d.
Reply to Gladstone. With
a Biography by J. M. Wheeler.
4d.
Rome or Reason? A Reply
to Cardinal Manning. 4d.
Crimes against Criminals.
3d.
Oration on Walt Whitman.
3d.
Oration on Voltaire. 3d.
Abraham Lincoln. 3d.
Paine the Pioneer. 2d.
Humanity’s Debt to Thomas
Paine. 2d.
Ernest Renan and Jesus
Ch hist. 2d.
True Religion. 2d.
The Three Philanthropists.
2d.
Love the Redeemer. 2d.
God and the State. 2d.
am I an Agnostic 2
Part I. 2d.
Why am I an Agnostic 2
Part II. 2d.
Faith and Fact. Reply to
Dr. Field. 2d.
God and Man. Second reply
to Dr. Field. 2d.
The Dying Creed. 2d.
The Limits of Toleration.
A Discussion with the Hon. F. D
Coudert and Gov. S. L. Woodford.
2d.
The Household of Faith.
2d.
Art and Morality. 2d.
Do I Blaspheme? 2d.
The Clergy and Common
Sense. 2d.
Social Salvation. 2d.
Marriage and Divorce. An
Agnostic’s View. 2d.
Skulls. 2d.
The Great Mistake. Id.
Live Topics. Id.
Myth and Miracle. Id.
Real Blasphemy. Id.
Repairing the Idols. Id.
Christ and Miracles. Id.
Creeds & Spirituality. Id.
London : R. Forder, 28 Stonecutter-street, E.C.
READ
“THE
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�
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Title
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Is suicide a sin? with a reply by Monsignor Ducey
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Ducey, Thomas J.
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 15 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Signed on front cover: R. Killop. "Works by Colonel R.G. Ingersoll" listed on back cover. Letter written by Ingersoll for the New York "World", in August 1894. Ducey's reply was one of many. No. 73g in Stein checklist, but with different title. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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R. Forder
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1894
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N364
N365
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Suicide
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Is suicide a sin? with a reply by Monsignor Ducey), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Sin-Christianity
Suicide