The origin and development of the moral ideas

As appears from this survey of facts, the moral valuation of suicide varies to an extreme degree. It depends partly on the circumstances in which the act is committed, partly on the point of view from which it is regarded and the notions held about the future life. When a person sacrifices his life for the benefit of a fellow-man or for the sake of his country or to gratify the supposed desire of a god, his deed may be an object of the highest praise. It may, further, call forth approval or admiration as indicating a keen sense of honour or as a test of courage; in Japan, says Professor Chamberlain, “the courage to take life—be it one’s own or that of others—ranks extraordinarily high in public esteem.”234 In other cases suicide is regarded with indifference as an act which concerns the agent alone. But for various reasons it is also apt to give rise to moral disapproval. The injury which the person committing it inflicts upon himself may excite sympathetic resentment towards him; he may be looked upon as injurer and injured at the same time. Plato asks in his ‘Laws’:—“What ought he to suffer who murders his nearest and so-called dearest friend? I mean, he who kills himself.”235 And the same point of view is conspicuous in St. Augustine’s argument, that the more innocent the self-murderer was before he committed his deed the greater is his guilt in taking his life236—an argument of particular force in connection with a theology which condemns suicides to everlasting torments and which regards it as a man’s first duty to save his soul.

The condemnation of killing others may by an association of ideas lead to a condemnation of killing one’s self,237 as is suggested by the Christian doctrine that suicide is prohibited in the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” The horror which the act inspires, the fear of the malignant ghost, and the defiling effect attributed to the shedding of blood, also tend to make suicide an object of moral reprobation or to increase the disapproval of it;238 and the same is the case with the exceptional treatment to which the self-murderer’s body is subject and his supposed annihilation or miserable existence after death, which easily come to be looked upon in the light of a punishment.239 Suicide is, moreover, blamed as an act of moral cowardice,240 and, especially, as an injury inflicted upon other persons, to whom the agent owed duties from which he withdrew by shortening his life.241 Even among savages we meet with the notion that a person is not entitled to treat himself just as he pleases.

Among the Goajiro Indians of Colombia, if anybody accidentally cuts himself, say with his own knife, or breaks a limb, or otherwise does himself an injury, his family on the mother’s side immediately demands blood-money, since, being of their blood, he is not allowed to spill it without paying for it; the father’s relatives demand tear-money, and friends present claim compensation to repay their sorrow at seeing a friend in pain.242 That a similar view is sometimes taken by savages with regard to suicide appears from a few statements quoted above.243 The opinion that suicide is an offence against society at large is particularly likely to prevail in communities where the interests of the individual are considered entirely subordinate to the interests of the State. The religious argument, again, that suicide is a sin against the Creator, an illegitimate interference with his work and decrees, comes to prominence in proportion as the moral consciousness is influenced by theological considerations. In Europe this influence is certainly becoming less and less. And considering that the religious view of suicide has been the chief cause of the extreme severity with which it has been treated in Christian countries, I am unable to subscribe to the opinion expressed by Professor Durkheim, that the more lenient judgment passed on it by the public conscience of the present time is merely accidental and transient.

The argument adduced in support of this opinion leaves out of account the real causes to which the valuation of suicide is due: it is said that the moral evolution is not likely to be retrogressive in this particular point after it has followed a certain course for centuries.244 It is true that moral progress has a tendency to increase our sense of duty towards our fellow-men. But at the same time it also makes us more considerate as regards the motives of conduct; and—not to speak of suicides committed for the benefit of others—the despair of the self-murderer will largely serve as a palliation of the wrong which he may possibly inflict upon his neighbour.