The origin and development of the moral ideas

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.135 The story that Themistocles preferred death to bearing arms against his native country was circulated with a view to doing honour to his memory.136 The tragedians frequently give expression to the idea that suicide is in certain circumstances becoming to a noble mind.137 Hecuba blames Helena for not putting an end to her life by a rope or a sword.138 Phaedra139 and Leda140 kill themselves out of shame, Haemon from violent remorse.141 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.”142 Instances are, moreover, mentioned of women killing themselves on the death of their husbands;143 and in Cheos it was the custom to prevent the decrepitude of old age by a voluntary death.144 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,145 evidently in order to make him harmless after death.146 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.147 At Thebes self-murderers were deprived of the accustomed funeral ceremonies,148 and in Cyprus they were left unburied.149 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.150 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.”151 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.152 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;153 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.154 But the opinions of the philosophers were anything but unanimous.155 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.156 Hegesias, surnamed the “death-persuader,” who belonged to the Cyrenaic school, tried to prove the utter worthlessness and unprofitableness of life.157 According to Epicurus we ought to consider “whether it be better that death should come to

us, or we go to him.”158 The Stoics, especially, advocated suicide as a relief from all kinds of misery.159 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.”160 The Stoics did not deny that it is wrong to commit suicide in cases where the act would be an injury to society;161 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.162 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.”163 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.”164 Pliny says that the power of dying when you please is the best