himself by means of wood, water, clods of earth, stones, weapons, poison,, or a rope, no funeral rites shall be performed by his relatives; 1 that he who resolves to die by his own hand shall fast for three days; and that he who attempts suicide, but remains alive, shall perform severe penance.2 The Buddhists allow a The Buddhists allow a man under certain circumstances to take his own life, but maintain that generally dire miseries are in store for the self-murderer, and look upon him as one who must have sinned deeply in a former state of existence.3 It should be added that in India, as elsewhere, the souls of those who have killed themselves or met death by any other violent means are regarded as particularly malevolent and troublesome.4 The Old Testament mentions a few cases of suicide.5 In none of them is any censure passed on the perpetrator of the deed, nor is there any text which expressly forbids a man to die by his own hand; and of Ahithophel it is said that he was buried in the sepulchre of his father. It seems, however, that according to Jewish custom persons who had killed themselves should be left unburied till sunset, perhaps for fear lest the spirit of the deceased otherwise might find its way back to the old home.8 Josephus, who mentions this custom, denounces suicide as an act of cowardice, as a crime most remote from the common nature of all animals, as impiety against the Creator; and he maintains that the souls of those who have thus acted madly against themselves will go to the darkest place in Hades. The Talmud considers suicide justifiable, if not meritorious, in the case of the chief of a vanquished army who is sure of disgrace and death at the hands of the exulting conqueror,10 or when a person has reason to fear being forced to renounce his religion. In all other circumstances the Rabbis consider it criminal for a person to shorten his own life, even when he is undergoing tortures which must soon end his earthly career; 2 and they forbid all marks of mourning for a self-murderer, such as wearing sombre apparel and eulogising him.3 Islam prohibits suicide, as an act which interferes with the decrees of God. Muhammedans say that it is a greater sin for a person to kill himself than to kill a fellow-man; 5 and, as a matter of fact, suicide is very rare in the Moslem world." Ancient Greece had its honourable suicides. The Milesian and Corinthian women, who by a voluntary death escaped from falling into the hands of the enemy, were praised in epigrams. The story that Themistocles preferred death to bearing arms against his native country was circulated with a view to doing honour to his memory. The tragedians frequently give expression to the idea that suicide is in certain circumstances becoming to a noble mind. Hecuba blames Helena for not putting an end to her life by a rope or a sword.10 Phaedra 11 and Leda 12 kill themselves out of shame, Haemon from violent remorse.13 Ajax decides to die after having in vain attempted to kill the Atreidae, maintaining that one of generous strain should nobly live, or forthwith nobly die." 14 Instances are, moreover, mentioned of women killing themselves on the death of their husbands; 15 and in Cheos it was the custom to prevent 1 Guittin, 57 B, quoted by Mendelsohn, Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 77, n. 163. Cf. 2 Maccabees, xiv. 37 sqq. 2 Ab Zara, 18 A, quoted by Mendelsohn, op. cit. p. 78, n. 163. Mendelsohn, op. cit. p. 77. I have often heard this myself. Lisle, Du suicide, pp. 305, 345 sq. Legoyt, Le suicide ancien et moderne, P. 7. Morselli, Il suicidio, p. 33. Westcott, op. cit. p. 12. the decrepitude of old age by a voluntary death. At Athens the right hand of a person who had taken his own life was struck off and buried apart from the rest of the body,2 evidently in order to make him harmless after death. 3 Plato says in his Laws,' probably in agreement with Attic custom, that those who inflict death upon themselves "from sloth or want of manliness," shall be buried alone in such places as are uncultivated and nameless, and that no column or inscription shall mark the spot where they are interred.4 At Thebes self-murderers were deprived of the accustomed funeral ceremonies,5 and in Cyprus they were left unburied. The objections which philosophers raised against the commission of suicide were no doubt to some extent shared by popular sentiments. Pythagoras is represented as saying that we should not abandon our station in life without the orders of our commander, that is, God." According to the Platonic Socrates, the gods are our guardians and we are a possession of theirs, hence " there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him."8 Aristotle, again, maintains that he who from rage kills himself commits a wrong against the State, and that therefore the State punishes him and civil infamy is attached to him. The religious argument could not be foreign to a people who regarded it as impious interference in the order of nature to make a bridge over the Hellespont and to separate a landscape from the continent; 10 and the idea that suicide is a matter of public concern evidently prevailed in Massilia, where no man was allowed to make away with himself unless the magistrates had given him permission to do so. But the 1 Strabo, Geographica, x. 5. 6, p. 486. Aelian, Varia historia, iii. 37. Cf. Boeckh, Gesammelte kleine Schriften, vii. 345 sqq.; Welcker, Kleine Schriften, ii. 502 sq. 2 Aeschines, In Ctesiphontem, 244. 3 Some Australian natives cut off the thumb of the right hand of a dead foe in order to make his spirit unable to throw the spear efficiently (Oldfield, in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. iii. 287). 3. Plato, Leges, ix. 873. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, lxiv. 7 Cicero, Cato Major, 20 (73). Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, v. 10 See Schmidt, op. cit. ii. 83, 441; Rohde, Psyche, p. 202, n. 1. 11 Valerius Maximus, Factorum dictorumque memorabilia, ii. 6. 7. opinions of the philosophers were anything but unanimous.1 Plato himself, in his Laws,' has no word of censure for him who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune, or out of irremediable and intolerable shame.2 Hegesias, surnamed the "deathpersuader," who belonged to the Cyrenaic school, tried to prove the utter worthlessness and unprofitableness of life.3 According to Epicurus we ought to consider "whether it be better that death should come to us, or we go to him." The Stoics, especially, advocated suicide as a relief from all kinds of misery.5 Seneca remarks that it is a man's own fault if he suffers, as, by putting an end to himself, he can put an end to his misery :-" As I would choose a ship to sail in, or a house to live in, so would I choose the most tolerable death when about to die. . . . Human affairs are in such a happy situation, that no one need be wretched but by choice. Do you like to be wretched? Live. Do you like it not? It is in your power to return from whence you came." 6 The Stoics did not deny that it is wrong to commit suicide in cases where the act would be an injury to society;7 Seneca himself points out that Socrates lived thirty days in prison. in expectation of death, so as to submit to the laws of his country, and to give his friends the enjoyment of his conversation to the last.8 Epictetus opposes indiscriminate suicide on religious grounds :-" Friends, wait for God; when he shall give the signal and release you from this service, then go to him; but for the present endure to dwell in the place where he has put you."9 Such a signal, however, is given often enough: it may consist in incurable disease, intolerable pain, or misery of any kind. "Remember this: the door is open; be not more timid than little children, but as they say, when the thing does not please them, 'I will play no longer,' so do you, when things seem to you of such a kind, say I will no longer play, and be gone: but if you stay, do not complain."1 Pliny says that the power of dying when you please is the best thing that God has given to man amidst all the sufferings of life.2 It seems that the Roman people, before the influence of Christianity made itself felt, regarded suicide with considerable moral indifference. According to Servius, it was provided by the Pontifical laws that whoever hanged himself should be cast out unburied; 3 but from what has been said before it is probable that this practice only owed its origin to fear of the dead man's ghost. Vergil enumerates self-murderers not among the guilty, but among the unfortunate, confounding them with infants. who have died prematurely and persons who have been condemned to die on a false charge.4 Throughout the whole history of pagan Rome there was no statute declaring it to be a crime for an ordinary citizen to take his own life. The self-murderer's rights were in no way affected by his deed, his memory was no less honoured than if he had died a natural death, his will was recognised by law, and the regular order of succession was not interfered with. In Roman law there are only two noteworthy exceptions to the rule that suicide is a matter with which. the State has nothing to do: it was prohibited in the case of soldiers, and the enactment was made that the suicide of an accused person should entail the same consequences as his condemnation ; but in the latter instance the deed was admitted as a confession of guilt. On the other 1 Ibid. i. 24. 20; i. 25. 20 sq.; ii. 16. 37 sqq. iii. 13. 14; iii. 24. 95 sqq. Pliny, Historia naturalis, ii.5 (7). 3 Servius, Commentarii in Virgilii Eneidos, xii. 603. 4 Vergil, Æneis, vi. 426 sqq. "Bourquelot, 'Recherches sur les opinions et la législation en matière de mort volontaire pendant le moyen age,' in Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, iii. 544. Geiger, op. cit. P. 64 sqq. Bynkershoek, Observationes Juris Romani, iv. 4, p. 350. Digesta, xlix. 16. 6. 7. Ibid. xlviii. 21. 3 pr. Cf. Bourquelot, op. cit. iii. 543 sq.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, v. 326; Lecky, History of European Morals, i. 219. |