Category Archives: Europe

by Archive Librarian | May 23, 2015 · 6:25 pm

VOLTAIRE
(1694-1778)

from Philosophical Dictionary

In his 83 years, Voltaire compiled an enormous body of work: drama, satire, novels, poetry, histories, essays, philosophy, and letters by the thousands. He is known for his outspoken critiques of social injustice, superstition, and intolerance, pursued with characteristic wit and critical aptness.

Born François-Marie Arouet in Paris, Voltaire’s mother died when he was seven. He was educated by the Jesuits and directed toward a legal career by his pragmatic father, who disapproved of his son’s interest in drama and poetry. Voltaire quickly abandoned the study of law to pursue his literary aspirations. At 22, because of a political satire he had directed toward the ruling Duke of Orléans, Voltaire spent 11 months imprisoned in the Bastille, during which time he wrote Oedipe (1718), the first of some 50 tragedies, and an early version of his epic poem Henriade (1723)

In 1726, after being beaten and thrown into the Bastille for the second time, Voltaire was exiled to England at his own request. As a result of his positive experiences and growth in England, he wrote the Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), which express his opposition to political and religious oppression and contain an implicit attack on French institutions. The next years, happy ones spent with his mistress Mme. du Châtelet in the study of science (particularly Newton, whom he and Mme. du Châtelet popularized), and history saw Voltaire embrace a philosophy of optimism, revealed in the Discourses in Verse on Man (1738–52). In 1750, Voltaire accepted the invitation of Frederick the Great to relocate to the Prussian court in Potsdam; however, Voltaire and Frederick’s friendship became strained, and Voltaire fled three years later. He eventually settled in Geneva.

As a result of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Voltaire’s philosophical outlook moved away from the optimistic belief that reason could reveal the secrets of nature. His attack on optimism culminated in Candide (1759), a masterpiece of dark comedy. In his later years, Voltaire published the Dictionnaire Philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) (1764). He moved to Ferney, a quiet base from which he would continue his tireless defense of victims of injustice for the next 20 years. At the performance of his last tragedy Irène in Paris in 1778, he was celebrated as the greatest living Frenchman, the embodiment of the Age of Enlightenment, and as one of the most effective champions ever known of freedom, tolerance, and common sense.

In the entry “Cato” in his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire explores a variety of issues and examples concerning suicide, from the follies of the English to the apparent lack of “common sense” in the texts of the Quran [q.v.] prohibiting suicide; Voltaire’s much shorter entry “Suicide” partly duplicates the discussion. He is widely conversant with the previous literature on the topic of suicide. He cites a variety of examples of prominent English suicides and alludes to the claim that a propensity to suicide is hereditary, but concludes that suicide is largely a cultural phenomenon, a matter of fashion as much as anything. It is also associated with a lack of engagement: the remedy, he implies, is to have something to do. Voltaire also asserts both in this text and in similar comments on Beccaria’s [q.v.] An Essay on Crimes and Punishments chapter xix: Of Suicide, pp. 180–182 (Philadelphia 1809) that “the cannon law assures us, that Judas committed a greater crime in hanging himself, than in betraying Jesus Christ.”

SOURCES
William F. Fleming, ed. and tr., Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary. Paris, London, New York, Chicago: E. R. DuMont, 1901. Entry “Cato: On Suicide, and the Abbe St. Cyran’s Book Legitimating Suicide,” vol. III, pp. 19-33. Also available from the Online Library of Liberty.

from Philosophical Dictionary

Cato: On Suicide, and the Abbe St. Cyran’s Book Legitimating Suicide

The ingenious La Motte says of Cato, in one of his philosophical rather than poetical odes . . .

Stern Cato, with more equal soul,
Had bowed to Cæsar’s wide control—
With Rome had to the conqueror bowed—
But that his spirit, rough and proud,
Had not the courage to await
A pardoned foe’s too humbling fate.

It was, I believe, because Cato’s soul was always equal, and retained to the last its love for his country and her laws that he chose rather to perish with her than to crouch to the tyrant. He died as he had lived. Incapable of surrendering! And to whom? To the enemy of Rome—to the man who had forcibly robbed the public treasury in order to make war upon his fellow-citizens and enslave them by means of their own money. A pardoned foe! It seems as if La Motte-Houdart were speaking of some revolted subject who might have obtained his majesty’s pardon by letters in chancery.

It seems rather absurd to say that Cato slew himself through weakness. None but a strong mind can thus surmount the most powerful instinct of nature. This strength is sometimes that of frenzy, but a frantic man is not weak.

Suicide is forbidden amongst us by the canon law. But the decretals, which form the jurisprudence of a part of Europe, were unknown to Cato, to Brutus, to Cassius, to the sublime Arria, to the Emperor Otho, to Mark Antony, and the rest of the heroes of true Rome, who preferred a voluntary death to a life which they believed to be ignominious.

We, too, kill ourselves, but it is when we have lost our money, or in the very rare excess of foolish passion for an unworthy object. I have known women kill themselves for the most stupid men imaginable. And sometimes we kill ourselves when we are in bad health, which action is a real weakness.

Disgust with our own existence, weariness of ourselves is a malady which is likewise a cause of suicide. The remedy is a little exercise, music, hunting, the play, or an agreeable woman. The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself to-day, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

I was almost an eye-witness of a suicide which deserves the attention of all cultivators of physical science. A man of a serious profession, of mature age, of regular conduct, without passions, and above indigence, killed himself on Oct. 17, 1769, and left to the town council of the place where he was born, a written apology for his voluntary death, which it was thought proper not to publish lest it should encourage men to quit a life of which so much ill is said. Thus far there is nothing extraordinary; such instances are almost every day to be met with. The astonishing part of the story is this:

His brother and his father had each killed himself at the same age. What secret disposition of organs, what sympathy, what concurrence of physical laws, occasions a father and his two sons to perish by their own hands, and by the same kind of death, precisely when they have attained such a year? Is it a disease which unfolds itself successively in the different members of a family—as we often see fathers and children die of smallpox, consumption, or any other complaint? Three or four generations have become deaf or blind, gouty or scorbutic, at a predetermined period.

Physical organization, of which moral is the offspring, transmits the same character from father to son through a succession of ages. The Appii were always haughty and inflexible, the Catos always severe. The whole line of the Guises were bold, rash, factious; compounded of the most insolent pride, and the most seductive politeness. From Francis de Guise to him who alone and in silence went and put himself at the head of the people of Naples, they were all, in figure, in courage, and in turn of mind, above ordinary men. I have seen whole length portraits of Francis de Guise, of the Balafré, and of his son: they are all six feet high, with the same features, the same courage and boldness in the forehead, the eye, and the attitude.

This continuity, this series of beings alike is still more observable in animals, and if as much care were taken to perpetuate fine races of men as some nations still take to prevent the mixing of the breeds of their horses and hounds the genealogy would be written in the countenance and displayed in the manners. There have been races of crooked and of six-fingered people, as we see red-haired, thick-lipped, long-nosed, and flat-nosed races. But that nature should so dispose the organs of a whole race that at a certain age each individual of that family will have a passion for self-destruction—this is a problem which all the sagacity of the most attentive anatomists cannot resolve. The effect is certainly all physical, but it belongs to occult physics. Indeed, what principle is not occult? We are not informed, nor is it likely that in the time of Cæsar and the emperors the inhabitants of Great Britain killed themselves as deliberately as they now do, when they have the vapors which they denominate the spleen.

On the other hand, the Romans, who never had the spleen, did not hesitate to put themselves to death. They reasoned, they were philosophers, and the people of the island of Britain were not so. Now, English citizens are philosophers and Roman citizens are nothing. The Englishman quits this life proudly and disdainfully when the whim takes him, but the Roman must have an indulgentia in articulo mortis; he can neither live nor die.

Sir William Temple says that a man should depart when he has no longer any pleasure in remaining. So died Atticus. Young women who hang and drown themselves for love should then listen to the voice of hope, for changes are as frequent in love as in other affairs.

An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do. Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: “N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished.” He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer.

Why have we fewer suicides in the country than in the towns? Because in the fields only the body suffers; in the town it is the mind. The laborer has not time to be melancholy; none kill themselves but the idle—they who, in the eyes of the multitude, are so happy.

I shall here relate some suicides that have happened in my own time, several of which have already been published in other works. The dead may be made useful to the living:

A Brief Account of Some Singular Suicides

Philip Mordaunt, cousin-german to the celebrated earl of Peterborough—so well known in all the European courts, and who boasted of having seen more postillions and kings than any other man—was a young man of twenty-seven, handsome, well made, rich, of noble blood, with the highest pretensions, and, which was more than all, adored by his mistress, yet Mordaunt was seized with a disgust for life. He paid his debts, wrote to his friends, and even made some verses on the occasion. He dispatched himself with a pistol without having given any other reason than that his soul was tired of his body and that when we are dissatisfied with our abode we ought to quit it. It seemed that he wished to die because he was disgusted with his good fortune.

In 1726 Richard Smith exhibited a strange spectacle to the world from a very different cause. Richard Smith was disgusted with real misfortune. He had been rich, and he was poor; he had been in health, and he was infirm; he had a wife with whom he had naught but his misery to share; their only remaining property was a child in the cradle. Richard Smith and Bridget Smith, with common consent, having embraced each other tenderly and given their infant the last kiss began with killing the poor child, after which they hanged themselves to the posts of their bed.

I do not know any other act of cold-blooded horror so striking as this. But the letter which these unfortunate persons wrote to their cousin, Mr. Brindley, before their death, is as singular as their death itself. “We believe,” say they, “that God will forgive us. . . . . We quit this life because we are miserable—without resource, and we have done our only son the service of killing him, lest he should become as unfortunate as ourselves. . . . .” It must be observed that these people, after killing their son through parental tenderness, wrote to recommend their dog and cat to the care of a friend. It seems they thought it easier to make a cat and dog happy in this life than a child, and they would not be a burden to their friends.

Lord Scarborough quitted this life in 1727, with the same coolness as he had quitted his office of Master of the Horse. He was reproached, in the House of Peers, with taking the king’s part because he had a good place at court. “My lords,” said he, “to prove to you that my opinion is independent of my place, I resign it this moment.” He afterwards found himself in a perplexing dilemma between a mistress whom he loved, but to whom he had promised nothing, and a woman whom he esteemed, and to whom he had promised marriage. He killed himself to escape from his embarrassment.

These tragical stories which swarm in the English newspapers, have made the rest of Europe think that, in England, men kill themselves more willingly than elsewhere. However, I know not but there are as many madmen or heroes to be found in Paris as in London. Perhaps, if our newspapers kept an exact list of all who had been so infatuated as to seek their own destruction, and so lamentably courageous as to effect it, we should, in this particular, have the misfortune to rival the English. But our journals are more discreet. In such of them as are acknowledged by the government private occurrences are never exposed to public slander.

All I can venture to say with assurance is that there is no reason to apprehend that this rage for self-murder will ever become an epidemical disorder. Against this, nature has too well provided. Hope and fear are the powerful agents which she often employs to stay the hand of the unhappy individual about to strike at his own breast. Cardinal Dubois was once heard to say to himself: “Kill thyself! Coward, thou darest not!”

It is said that there have been countries in which a council was established to grant the citizens permission to kill themselves when they had good and sufficient reasons. I answer either that it was not so or that those magistrates had not much to do.

It might, indeed, astonish us, and does, I think, merit a serious examination, that almost all the ancient Roman heroes killed themselves when they had lost a battle in the civil wars. But I do not find, neither in the time of the League, nor in that of the Fronde, nor in the troubles of Italy, nor in those of England, that any chief thought proper to die by his own hand. These chiefs, it is true, were Christians, and there is a great difference between the principles of a Christian warrior and those of a Pagan hero. But why were these men whom Christianity restrained when they would have put themselves to death, restrained by nothing when they chose to poison, assassinate, and bring their conquered enemies to the scaffold? Does not the Christian religion forbid these murders much more than self-murder, of which the New Testament makes no mention?

The apostles of suicide tell us that it is quite allowable to quit one’s house when one is tired of it. Agreed, but most men would prefer sleeping in a mean house to lying in the open air.

I once received a circular letter from an Englishman, in which he offered a prize to any one who should most satisfactorily prove that there are occasions on which a man might kill himself. I made no answer: I had nothing to prove to him. He had only to examine whether he liked better to die than to live.

Another Englishman came to me at Paris in 1724; he was ill, and promised me that he would kill himself if he was not cured by July 20. He accordingly gave me his epitaph in these words: “Valete cura!” “Farewell care!” and gave me twenty-five louis to get a small monument erected to him at the end of the Faubourg St. Martin. I returned him his money on July 20, and kept his epitaph.

In my own time the last prince of the house of Courtenai, when very old, and the last branch of Lorraine-Harcourt, when very young, destroyed themselves almost without its being heard of. These occurrences cause a terrible uproar the first day, but when the property of the deceased has been divided they are no longer talked of.

The following most remarkable of all suicides has just occurred at Lyons, in June, 1770: A young man well known, who was handsome, well made, clever, and amiable, fell in love with a young woman whom her parents would not give to him. So far we have nothing more than the opening scene of a comedy, the astonishing tragedy is to follow.

The lover broke a blood-vessel and the surgeons informed him there was no remedy. His mistress engaged to meet him, with two pistols and two daggers in order that, if the pistols missed the daggers might the next moment pierce their hearts. They embraced each other for the last time: rose-colored ribbons were tied to the triggers of the pistols; the lover holding the ribbon of his mistress’s pistol, while she held the ribbon of his. Both fired at a signal given, and both fell at the same instant.

Of this fact the whole city of Lyons is witness. Pætus and Arria, you set the example, but you were condemned by a tyrant, while love alone immolated these two victims.

Laws Against Suicide

Has any law, civil or religious, ever forbidden a man to kill himself, on pain of being hanged after death, or on pain of being damned? It is true that Virgil has said…

The next in place, and punishment, are they
Who prodigally throw their souls away—
Fools, who repining at their wretched state,
And loathing anxious life, suborn their fate;
With late repentance now they would retrieve
The bodies they forsook, and wish to live;
Their pains and poverty desire to bear,
To view the light of heaven and breathe the vital air;—
But fate forbids, the Stygian floods oppose,
And, with nine circling streams, the captive souls inclose.

—Aeneis, lib. vi. v. 434 et seq., tr. Dryden.

Such was the religion of some of the pagans, yet, notwithstanding the weariness which awaited them in the next world it was an honor to quit this by killing themselves—so contradictory are the ways of men. And among us is not duelling unfortunately still honorable, though forbidden by reason, by religion, and by every law? If Cato and Cæsar, Antony and Augustus, were not duellists it was not that they were less brave than our Frenchmen. If the duke of Montmorency, Marshal de Marillac, de Thou, Cinq-Mars, and so many others, chose rather to be dragged to execution in a wagon, like highwaymen, than to kill themselves like Cato and Brutus, it was not that they had less courage than those Romans, nor less of what is called honor. The true reason is that at Paris self-murder in such cases was not then the fashion; but it was the fashion at Rome.

The women of the Malabar coast throw themselves, living, on the funeral piles of their husbands. Have they, then, more courage than Cornelia? No; but in that country it is the custom for the wives to burn themselves.

In Japan it is the custom for a man of honor, when he has been insulted by another man of honor, to rip open his belly in the presence of his enemy and say to him: “Do you likewise if thou hast the heart.” The aggressor is dishonored for ever if he does not immediately plunge a great knife into his belly.

The only religion in which suicide is forbidden by a clear and positive law is Mahometanism. In the fourth sura it is said: “Do not kill yourself, for God is merciful unto you, and whosoever killeth himself through malice and wickedness shall assuredly be burned in hell fire.”

This is a literal translation. The text, like many other texts, appears to want common sense. What is meant by “Do not kill yourself for God is merciful”? Perhaps we are to understand—Do not sink under your misfortunes, which God may alleviate: do not be so foolish as to kill yourself to-day since you may be happy to-morrow.

“And whosoever killeth himself through malice and wickedness.” This is yet more difficult to explain. Perhaps, in all antiquity, this never happened to any one but the Phrædra of Euripides, who hanged herself on purpose to make Theseus believe that she had been forcibly violated by Hippolytus. In our own times a man shot himself in the head, after arranging all things to make another man suspected of the act.

In the play of George Dandin, his jade of a wife threatens him with killing herself to have him hanged. Such cases are rare. If Mahomet foresaw them he may be said to have seen a great way. The famous Duverger de Haurane, abbot of St. Cyran, regarded as the founder of Port Royal, wrote, about the year 1608, a treatise on “Suicide,” which has become one of the scarcest books in Europe.

“The Decalogue,” says he, “forbids us to kill. In this precept self-murder seems no less to be comprised than murder of our neighbor. But if there are cases in which it is allowable to kill our neighbor there likewise are cases in which it is allowable to kill ourselves.

“We must not make an attempt upon our lives until we have consulted reason. The public authority, which holds the place of God, may dispose of our lives. The reason of man may likewise hold the place of the reason of God: it is a ray of the eternal light.”

St. Cyran extends this argument, which may be considered as a mere sophism, to great length, but when he comes to the explanation and the details it is more difficult to answer him. He says: “A man may kill himself for the good of his prince, for that of his country, or for that of his relations.”

We do not, indeed, see how Codrus or Curtius could be condemned. No sovereign would dare to punish the family of a man who had devoted himself to death for him; nay, there is not one who would dare neglect to recompense it. St. Thomas, before St. Cyran, had said the same thing. But we need neither St. Thomas, nor Cardinal Bonaventura, nor Duverger de Haurane to tell us that a man who dies for his country is deserving of praise.

The abbot of St. Cyran concludes that it is allowable to do for ourselves what it is noble to do for others. All that is advanced by Plutarch, by Seneca, by Montaigne, and by fifty other philosophers, in favor of suicide is sufficiently known; it is a hackneyed topic—a wornout commonplace. I seek not to apologize for an act which the laws condemn, but neither the Old Testament, nor the New has ever forbidden man to depart this life when it has become insupportable to him. No Roman law condemned self-murder; on the contrary, the following was the law of the Emperor Antoine, which was never revoked:

“If your father or your brother not being accused of any crime kill himself, either to escape from grief, or through weariness of life, or through despair, or through mental derangement, his will shall be valid, or, if he die intestate his heirs shall succeed.”

Notwithstanding this humane law of our masters we still drag on a sledge and drive a stake through the body of a man who has died a voluntary death; we do all we can to make his memory infamous; we dishonor his family as far as we are able; we punish the son for having lost his father, and the widow for being deprived of her husband.

We even confiscate the property of the deceased, which is robbing the living of the patrimony which of right belongs to them. This custom is derived from our canon law, which deprives of Christian burial such as die a voluntary death. Hence it is concluded that we cannot inherit from a man who is judged to have no inheritance in heaven. The canon law, under the head “De Pœnitentia,” assures us that Judas committed a greater crime in strangling himself than in selling our Lord Jesus Christ.

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Filed under Europe, Selections, The Early Modern Period, Voltaire

by Archive Librarian | · 6:24 pm

MONTESQUIEU
(1689-1755)

from The Persian Letters
from Consideration of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline
from The Spirit of Laws

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Bréde et de la Montesquieu, was a French political and social philosopher, jurist, satirist, and the first of the great French men of letters of the Enlightenment. Born at La Bréde near Bordeaux, Montesquieu was reared until the age of three by a peasant family, like Montaigne [q.v.], in order that he might acquire an understanding of the lower classes. In 1696, his mother died, leaving him the barony of La Bréde at age seven. He left for school in 1700, attending the Collège de Juilly and later the University of Bordeaux, where he studied law to become an advocate in 1708. In 1716, his uncle Jean-Baptiste died, leaving him the barony of Montesquieu and the deputy presidency of the Bordeaux Parliament, a position of some honor. In 1721, he published The Persian Letters, a satire of European (French) customs and society that made him famous.

After 10 years of service, Montesquieu sold his political office and, in 1728, left for a three-year tour of Europe and England that had a great effect on his political and aesthetic sensibilities. By 1734, he finished his Consideration of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline. In this work, which exhibits his uniquely secular approach to history, Montesquieu argued that Rome’s greatness was due to its adaptable institutions and martial values. In 1748, he published anonymously his best-known work, The Spirit of the Laws, a major and influential work of political theory. This work, among other things, outlined a classification of the different types of government—its notion of a separation of governmental powers, which Montesquieu derived from his observations of English government, influenced the Constitution of the United States—and examined the fundamental relationships that underlie the laws of a civilized society. Montesquieu declared history as the basis for human activity and viewed religion as a social phenomenon rather than an underlying force. In this respect, Montesquieu sought to establish a social science of man comparable to the natural sciences. He was committed to liberty as the key ingredient in a well-functioning civil society.

In The Persian Letters, Montesquieu employs a character drawn from a different society to criticize the usual arguments used against suicide in the Christian European west. In Considerations of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, he addresses self-love and altruism, in effect lamenting the suicide of Cato; and in the brief passage provided here from The Spirit of the Laws, he differentiates between the “educated” socially conditioned, principled suicides of the Roman Stoics and the “unaccountable” suicides of the English, attributable primarily to mental illness.

SOURCES
Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Bréde et de la Montesquieu: The Persian Letters, Letter 76, tr. C. J. Betts. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973. Considerations of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, Ch. XII, pp. 113-118, tr. David Lowenthal. New York: Free Press, 1965. Available from the Constitution Society. The Spirit of the Laws, Book XIV, Ch. 12, p. 107, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 38, tr. Thomas Nugent and revised by J. V. Prichard. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. Available from the Constitution Society.

from THE PERSIAN LETTERS

Letter 76: Usbek to his friend Ibben, at Smyrna

In Europe the law treats suicides with the utmost ferocity. They are put to death for a second time, so to speak; their bodies are dragged in disgrace through the streets and branded, to denote infamy, and their goods are confiscated.

It seems to me, Ibben, that these laws are very unjust. When I am overcome by anguish, poverty, or humiliation, why must I be prevented from putting an end to my troubles, and harshly deprived of the remedy which lies in my power?

Why am I required to work for a society from which I consent to be excluded, and to submit against my will to a convention which was made without my participation? Society is based on mutual advantage, but when I find it onerous what is to prevent me renouncing it? Life was given to me as favour, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer; when the cause disappears, the effect should disappear also.

Would the king want me to be subject to him when I derive no advantages from being a subject? Can my fellow-citizens be so unfair as to drive me to despair for their conveniences? Is God to be different from every other benefactor, and is it his will that I should be condemned to accept favours which make me wretched?

I am obliged to obey the law so long as I continue to live under its authority, but when I no longer do so does it still apply to me?

But, it will be said, you are disturbing the providential order. God united your soul to your body, and you are separating them; you are therefore going against his intentions, and resisting him.

What does that imply? Am I disturbing the order of Providence when I modify the arrangement of matter and turn a sphere into a cube, when it had been given its spherical shape by the first laws of motion, that is to say the laws of creation and conservation? Of courts not: I am merely exercising a right which I have been given; and in this sense I could disrupt the whole of nature at will, and it would be impossible to say that I am opposing Providence.

When my soul is separated from my body, will the universe be less orderly or less well arranged? Do you believe that the new synthesis will be less perfect, or less dependent on general laws, or that the world will have lost anything by it? The works of God will be any the less great, or rather less immense? When my body has been turned into a grain of wheat, or a worm, or a piece of turf, do you think that these products of nature are less worthy of her? Or that when my soul has been purged of every terrestrial ingredient it will be less exalted?

All such ideas, my dear Ibben, originate in our pride alone. We do not realize our littleness, and in spite of everything we want to count for something in the universe, play a part, be a person of importance. We imagine that the annihilation of a being as perfect as ourselves would detract from nature as a whole, and we cannot conceive that one man more or less in the world, and indeed the whole of mankind a hundred million heads like ours, are only a minute, intangible speck, which God perceives simply because of the immensity of his knowledge.

From Paris, the 15th of the moon of Saphar, 1715

from CONSIDERATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS AND THEIR DECLINE

. . .Almost all ventures are spoiled by the fact that those who undertake them usually seek—in addition to the main objective—certain small, personal successes which flatter their self-love and give them self-satisfaction.

I believe that if Cato had preserved himself for the republic, he would have given a completely different turn to events. Cicero’s talents admirably suited him for a secondary role, but he was not fit for the main one. His genius was superb, but his soul was often common. With Cicero, virtue was the accessory, with Cato, glory. Cicero always thought of himself first, Cato always forgot about himself. The latter wanted to save the republic for its own sake, the former in order to boast of it. . . .

Brutus and Cassius killed themselves with inexcusable precipitation, and we cannot read this chapter in their lives without pitying the republic which was thus abandoned. Cato had killed himself at the end of the tragedy; these began it, in a sense, by their death.

Several reasons can be given for this practice of committing suicide that was so common among the Romans: the advances of the Stoic sect, which encouraged it; the establishment of triumphs and slavery, which made many great men think they must not survive a defeat; the advantage those accused of some crime gained by bringing death upon themselves, rather than submitting to a judgment whereby their memory would be tarnished and their property confiscated; a kind of point of honor, more reasonable, perhaps, than that which today leads us to slaughter our friend for a gesture or word; finally, a great opportunity for heroism, each man putting an end to the part he played in the world wherever he wished.

We could add to these a great facility in executing the deed. When the soul is completely occupied with the action it is about to perform, with the motive determining it, with the peril it is going to avoid, it does not really see death, for passion makes us feel but never see.

Self-love, the love of our own preservation, is transformed in so many ways, and acts by such contrary principles, that it leads us to sacrifice our being for the love of our being. And such is the value we set on ourselves that we consent to cease living because of a natural and obscure instinct that makes us love ourselves more than our very life. It is certain that men have become less free, less courageous, less disposed to great enterprises than they were when, by means of this power which one assumed, one could at any moment escape from every other power.

from THE SPIRIT OF LAWS

Of the Laws against Suicides. We do not find in history that the Romans ever killed themselves without a cause; but the English are apt to commit suicide most unaccountably; they destroy themselves even in the bosom of happiness. This action among the Romans was the effect of education, being connected with their principles and customs; among the English it is the consequence of a distemper, being connected with the physical state of the machine, and independent of every other cause.

In all probability it is a defect of the filtration of the nervous juice: the machine, whose motive faculties are often unexerted, is weary of itself; the soul feels no pain, but a certain uneasiness in existing. Pain is a local sensation, which leads us to the desire of seeing an end of it; the burden of life, which prompts us to the desire of ceasing to exist, is an evil confined to no particular part.

It is evident that the civil laws of some countries may have reasons for branding suicide with infamy: but in England it cannot be punished without punishing the effects of madness.

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Filed under Europe, Montesquieu, Selections, Stoicism, The Early Modern Period

by Archive Librarian | · 6:23 pm

ISAAC WATTS
(1674-1748)

from A Defense Against the Temptation to Self-Murder

Isaac Watts, regarded as the father of English hymnody, was born in Southampton, England, and studied at the Dissenting Academy at Stoke Newington, now inside London, until 1694. He then became a family tutor to Sir John Hartopp; Watts’ rise to prominence as a preacher began with his sermons at Hartopp’s family chapel in Freeby, Leicestershire, and cumulated in his appointment as a full pastor at the Mark Lane Independent (i.e., Congregational) Chapel, London, in 1702. Here he wrote many now-famous Protestant hymns, including “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and “There is a Land of Pure Delight.” His hymns and psalms are published in the collections Horae Lyricae (1706), Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719). Due to a breakdown in health, in 1712 he went to spend a week in Hertfordshire with Sir Thomas Abney, with whose family he would live for the rest of his life. Toward the end of his life Watts dedicated more time to writing, eventually publishing his influential work Logic, or the Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth (1724).

In A Defense Against the Temptation to Self-Murther (1726), Watts discusses the “folly and danger” of suicide. The piece is a vehement exhortation in the form of a direct address to anyone who might be tempted to suicide, and it attempts to dissuade the suicidal person with both religious and social arguments. It would mean permanent damnation, Watts insists, from which there could be no repentance; it would mean shame, as evidenced by the disgrace of burial at the crossroads; and it would mean shame for one’s family as well. Among the “dissuasions” Watts employs is an appeal to concern for others: “If it be so hard to you to bear a little poverty, shame, sorrow, reproach, etc. that you will die rather than bear it, why will you entail these on your kindred and on those who love you best?”

Source

Isaac Watts, A Defense Against the Temptation to Self-Murther, London: Printed for J. Clark, R. Hett, E. Matthews, and R. Ford, 1726.

from A DEFENSE AGAINST THE TEMPTATION TO SELF-MURTHER

Some General Dissuasions from Self-Murther, by shewing the Folly and Danger of it.

WHEN this bloody practice has been proved to be highly criminal in the sight of God, we can hardly suppose that any other considerations should be more effectual to deter a man who professes Christianity from the guilt of so aggravated a sin: yet it may be possible to set the dangerous and dreadful consequences of this practice in a fuller view, a more diffusive and affecting light: for if you turn it on all sides it has still some new appearances of terror, and furnishes out new dissuasives from the execution of it.

I. Consider that ‘tis too dangerous an attempt to venture upon it unless you had a full assurance of its lawfulness. Now suppose the power of your own iniquities, the artifices of the Tempter, and the prevailing ill humours of animal nature should join together so fatally as to blind your eyes against the full conviction of its sinfulness, yet you can never prove that self-murther is certainly a lawful thing. The furthest you can go is to suppose that possibly it may be lawful; but on the other hand, if you should be under a mistake, ‘tis a dreadful, ‘tis a fatal, ‘tis an eternal one. You put your self beyond all possibility of rectifying this error through all the long ages of futurity.

Whatsoever vain fancies some of the heathens have indulg’d who knew not God, and had very little and dark apprehensions of a future state, yet in the Christian world the utmost that the most sanguine or most melancholy among this tribe can well pretend is, that perhaps it may be Lawful, or at least that it is a little and a very pardonable crime, (and they have been forced to wink their eyes against the light to arrive at this perhaps). But if it be not pardonable, then nothing remains for the criminal but everlasting punishment. That terrible word eternal, eternal, eternal misery, carries such a long doleful accent with it, and includes such an immense train of agonies without hope, that it is infinitely better to bear the sorrows, the trials and uneasiness of this life for a few short and uncertain years, than rashly to venture upon such a practice, whose pretended and doubtful advantages bear no proportion at all to the infinite and extreme hazard of an endless state of torment.

II. Suppose you could by any false reasonings persuade your consciences that the act of self-destruction was no sin, yet are you so sure of the present goodness of your state towards God, and that all your other sins are pardoned, that you could plunge your self this moment into eternity? ‘Tis generally under a fit of impatience that persons are tempted to destroy themselves; now is the present frame and temper of your soul such as is fit to appear in before the great tribunal of heaven? You well know that as the tree falls so it must lie, to the north or to the south, Eccl. xi. 3. After death judgment immediately succeeds, Heb. ix. 27. There is no faith and repentance in the grave, nor pardoning grace to be implored when the state of trial is past, Eccl. ix. 10. Isa. xxxviii. 18. They that go down to the pit cannot hope for thy truth. Are you now so sure of your creator’s love, and of your perfect conformity to his laws of judgment? Are you so holy, so innocent, so righteous in your self, or so certain of your interest in the merits of a mediator, that you dare rush this moment before the bar of a great and terrible God, and tell him that you are come to have your state determined for all everlasting? If not, be wise and bethink yourself a little: use and improve the delay and opportunity which his grace and providence offer you in this life, for a more effectual securing a better life hereafter.

But if we go a little farther and suppose the action in it self to be criminal, then remember that you send your self out of this world with the guilt of a wilful criminal action on your conscience; you preclude your own repentance of this sin in this world, and the other world knows no repentance that is available to any good purpose. You shoot your self headlong into an eternal state; and are you sure that you shall never repent of it in the long future ages of your existence? But, alas! all that repentance comes too late to relieve you from the dismal effects of your rashness. All the repentance of that invisible world is but the sting of conscience which will add exquisite pain to your appointed punishment. Surely you should have the most evident and undeniable proofs of the goodness of that action which can never be revers’d, and which puts you for ever beyond the possibility of useful repentance.

Give me leave to add in this place what is the constant doctrine of the Bible and the sense of Christians, (viz.) that a wilful sinner dying impenitent cannot be sav’d. Now if there be no space given for serious reflection and penitence in the case of a self-murtherer, what room is there for hope hereafter? except only where the persons really distracted, and the Great God our Judge knows how to distinguish exactly how far every action is influenced by bodily distempers. This is the only hope of surviving friends.

III. Think yet again, what an odium, what scandal and everlasting shame you bring upon your name and character by such a fact. ‘Tis a reproach that spreads wide among the kindred of the self-murtherer; it descends to his posterity and follows him thro’ many generations.

It may be observed also that in the Rubrick of the Church of England before the burial service, self-murtherers are ranked with excommunicated persons: The church has no hope of them as true Christians: And as the church denies them Christian burial, so the civil government did heretofore appoint that they should be put into the earth with the utmost contempt; and this was generally done in some publick cross-way, that the shame and infamy might be made known to every passenger; and that this infamy might be lasting, they were ordained to have a stake driven through their dead bodies which was not to be removed. ‘Tis pity this practice has been omitted of late years by the too favourable sentence of their neighbors on the jury, who generally pronounce them distracted: And thus they are excused from this publick mark of abhorrence. Perhaps ‘twere much better if this practice were revived again; for since the laws of men cannot punish their persons, therefore their dead bodies should be expos’d to just and deserved shame, that so this iniquity might be laid under all the odium that human power and law can cast upon it, to testify a just abhorrence of the fact, and to deter survivors from the like practice.

IV. Can any man of a generous or kind disposition think of all the mischief done to his friends and kindred by the destruction of himself, and yet practice it? Think of the publick scandal and disgrace that it spreads over the whole family; think of the shame and inward anguish of spirit that it necessarily gives to surviving friends and relatives; what sorrow of heart for the loss of a father, or mother or brother, a sister, a daughter, or a son in such a sudden, such a dreadful, and such a shameful manner of death? What terrible perplexity of spirit what inconsolable vexation of mind, what fears of eternal misery for the soul of the deceas’d? This gives them a wound beyond what they are able to bear, and sometimes wears out their life in sorrow, and brings them down to the grave. One would think that the injury done to friends and dear relations would be a sufficient bar against it, to souls who have any sense of justice, or any pretence to goodness and love. If it be so hard for you to bear a little poverty, shame, sorrow, reproach, &c. that you will die rather than bear it, why will you entail these on your kindred and on those who love you best?

In order to work upon persons that have any compassion for their surviving kindred, ‘tis fit they should know also that the English Law calls a Self-Murtherer, felo de se, or a felon to himself, and upon this account the estate and effects of the deceased are forfeited by law and cannot descend to the relatives, unless it appear that the person who laid violent hand upon himself was distracted. Now in this case Bishop Fleetwood finds fault severely with juries who now a days bring in almost all self-murtherers distracted, and he desires them to consider “Whether the constant mitigation of the rigours of the law against self-murtherers mayn’t give some encouragement to that practice and whether the favourable verdict they bring in, be always so righteous and so seasonable as they imagine? And since the wisdom of the law intends that the confiscation of estates, the undoing a family, and the shameful burial shall deter them from these horrible attempts, whether the mercy that defeats all these intentions be not more likely to continue than to repress these cruel violences? Were a person sure that his estate would be forfeited, and his effects carried away from his wife, children and family, were he sure that his dead body should be publickly expos’d, bury’d in the high-way, and with a stake driven through it as a mark of huge infamy, perhaps he would give way to calmer counsels, and be content to bear a little shame, or pain, or loss, till God saw fit to put an end to all his sufferings by natural means: And therefore an instance or two of such severity as is legal, well and wisely chosen, might prove a greater preservative against these violences, than such a constant and expected mercy, as we always find on these occasions: For men have now no fear of laws; and when they have laid aside the fear of God, they go about this business with great readiness, they are sure of favour in this world, and they will venture the other.”

V. Think in the last place how fatal an influence your example may have to bring death and ruin on others, and that on their immortal souls as well as their mortal life. Remember what an effect the self-murther of Saul had, when his armour bearer followed him, and dy’d also by his own sword. And oftentimes where self-murther is practiced, it fills the heads of other melancholy and uneasy persons with the same bloody thoughts, and teaches them to enter into the same temptation. Think then with yourself, “What if I should not only destroy my own soul forever, but become the dreadful occasion of others destroying their souls, and flinging themselves into the same place of torture? What sharp accents will this add to my anguish of conscience, in hell, that I have led others into the same wretchedness without remedy, without hope, and without end?” Think and enquire whether every self-murtherer who may be influenced hereafter by your example to this impious fact, may not be sent particularly to visit your ghost in those invisible regions, and become a new tormentor. Whether all such future events may not be turn’d by the just judgment of God to encrease your agonies and horrors of soul in that world of despair and misery.

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Filed under Christianity, Europe, Protestantism, Selections, Sin, The Early Modern Period, Watts, Isaac

by Archive Librarian | · 6:21 pm

JOHN ADAMS
(1662-1720)

from An Essay Concerning Self-Murther

Born in London, the son of a Lisbon merchant, John Adams was educated at Eton and at King’s College, Cambridge, earning bachelor’s, master’s, and divinity degrees. He traveled to France, Italy, Spain, and Ireland. In 1687, he was appointed to the parish of Higham in Leicestershire. In London, he was lecturer of St. Clement’s, rector of St. Alban, on Wood Street, and rector of St. Bartholomew. He was also made prebendary of Canterbury, and in 1708, became canon of Windsor. He served as chaplain to William III and also to Queen Anne. In 1712, he was elected provost of King’s College, a post that he held until his death.

Adams was recognized as an eloquent preacher and accomplished linguist, and he often spoke on public occasions. At least 15 of his sermons were published during his life. The selection here is taken from An Essay Concerning Self-Murther (1700). Here, Adams bases his argument against self-murder, or suicide, on obligations and duties persons have as members of civil society. For if suicide were condoned and the proper authority given to those who would take their own lives, it must be universally so; and that, to Adams, would cause a severe weakening of civil society. Further, Adams also considers the difference between putting oneself at great risk and self-murder, concluding that only the former is justified because, if death results, it was not the intent of the act, but only a foreseen consequence. Reminiscent of Aquinas’s argument that murder in self-defense is justifiable as long as it is not intended, Adams’s consideration of double effect applies specifically to actions that may result in one’s own death.

SOURCE

John Adams, An Essay Concerning Self-Murther wherein is endeavour’d to prove that it is unlawful according to natural principles: with some considerations upon what is pretended from the said principles, by the author of a treatise intituled, Biathanatos, and others. London: Printed for Tho. Bennet, at the Half-Moon, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1700, pp. 23-30, 94-130, spelling modernized.

from AN ESSAY CONCERNING SELF-MURTHER

CHAP. III. Man Considered as a Member of Civil Society. Self-Murther proved by several Argument’s to be Destructive to Civil Society; from which, and what was said before, concluded to be an Act of the greatest Injustice and therefore unlawful.

Hitherto we have considered Man as Single and Independent from Humane Laws, and showed that as he is so, Self-Murther is an Act of Injustice towards God, by destroying that which is his alone; and also both towards God and towards a Mans own self, by the positive and willful refusal of performing that end for which he received Life, and in which his happiness truly consists. Let us in the next place, for a further confirmation of the unlawfulness of this Act, consider Man as a Member of Civil Society.

And this we ought to do with the greater attention, because, though it may be convenient in some respects to consider him in the individual, and in the state of Nature, yet this is only Notional; he cannot be so as to any part of the World which we have to do withal, nor can he be so at any time but to his great Misfortune, for as ’tis necessary for his Security, that he should be under some Government, so is it likewise necessary, for the Perfection of his Nature: for his having a larger and a nobler compass for his Reason and his Virtue; there being several Virtues which cannot be exercised by Man when alone, but which owe their being to Society.

If then we consider Man in this manner, his Obligations to preserve Life are still more; both as the end of Life is enlarged, (the good of others, as well as his own being concerned in it) and as he has then less to do with his Life, (the use of it being more at others disposal) than when he was considered in the state of Nature: Because he has not then the same Authority to defend himself which he had before, but is bound in most Cases to have recourse to the Magistrate for this purpose. Besides, by enjoying the benefit of Protection in any Government, he must be supposed either tacitly or expressly to have consented in a mutual Agreement of Offence and Defense for the maintaining of the same Protection; which being chiefly for the preservation of Life, as Self-Murther must be unlawful, so it must be absurd. But that which is most considerable and sufficient of it self to prove Self-Murther to be unlawful, is, that this may prove destructive to the very Being of Society, as will appear if we consider the Reasons following.

1. Because this wholly destroys the best Measure of mutual Kindness and Justice, that which is generally confessed to be one of the chiefest and plainest Laws of Nature; namely the doing to others as we would be done to our selves: The greatest injury that can be done to another is the Murthering of him; now if a Man has the liberty to Murther himself, the measure of Justice in the most important Concerns towards others is broken; nor can it signify any thing to say, that this is done out of love to ones self, because it may be pretended that it may be done out of love to another too, yet no one sure will ever allow this as a reasonable pretence for the Murther of his Neighbor.

2. This would utterly destroy the force of Humane Laws; Man’s having a right or power to kill himself, when he thinks fitting, would make void all Obligation to Humane Laws, as to the threats of Punishment, without a dread of which no Law would signify any thing: The greatest Punishment that Humane Laws can threaten is Death; now if Men have Authority to kill themselves, and be taught and persuaded that they have so, and be encouraged by the Examples of others, which will not be wanting, when Men are so persuaded; the threats of Death will be despised as to the disgrace or torment of it when public, because they may bring it upon themselves with ease and privacy at home, and therefore they will not be obliged to any Duty, by the fear of this, much less by the fear of any thing else; but would Rob, Ravish, Murther, &c.

3. Whatever the Reasons are, in relation to Civil Society, for which the Murther of another is forbidden; the same hold and perhaps with greater force, as to the Murthering of ones self; those Reasons are chiefly the having no Authority, the depriving the Public of a Subject, the impossibility of making any Equivalent Satisfaction. The two first of these are of the same force as to the Murthering of ones self, the third seems to be of much greater; for he that Murthers another may make some satisfaction as to public Justice, by the forfeiture of his own Life, and he that forfeits his Life publicly upon this Account makes some amends to the State, under which he lives, by deterring others from committing the same Crime by the Example of his Punishment; whereas on the contrary, he that Murthers himself, not only evades all satisfaction to the Public as to the paying Personal and Sensible Punishment; but in so doing gives encouragement to others to commit the same: Wherefore Self-Murther may be a greater Crime in regard of the Public, especially if it be a public Person, than the Murthering of another Man; and if so is undoubtedly forbidden by that Law of Nature, Thou shalt not kill: otherwise that Law would be very imperfect, and reach only to the lesser Crime, and permit the greater.

Lastly, For a Man to have a right to kill himself when ever he pleases, must be destructive to Civil Government; because this Right must be Universal: One Man may exercise it as well as another; and since no public rule can be given to show when, in what circumstances of Adversity, (which are more or less felt by different Men, according to their different Portions of Reason or Virtue, their Courage or Constitution) since, I say, no public rule can be given to all Men to prescribe the Case exactly wherein it shall be reasonable and lawful to put this Right in Execution; every Man must be left to judge for himself, that is, to be led as his own Passions or Appetites guide him. After this rate great numbers may make themselves away, which by Example and Custom may grow still greater and greater, till the Public is weakened not only by the loss of several of its Members, but also by the check and stop which there must be upon all Business, and Trade, Trust in one another; since the strictest Obligations to this purpose may be thus evaded.

Add to this the misery of the Family particularly concerned, the horrid sense which such an Act imprints upon the best Men’s Minds, the general Aversion which it causes, and consequently the shame of the Relations and Acquaintance of the Self-Murtherer, and very often too the Confusion and Desolation of the forsaken Widow or Orphans; all which must be of ill Consequence to any State, especially if the Fact is frequently committed.

But lest this should give any color for the plausible pretence of Compassion which is commonly made use of by those who are concerned in the Coroner’s Inquest upon such Occasions, I cannot but observe by the way, that all Kindness or Generosity towards particular Persons, though they be nearest Relations, is unwarrantable, which is prejudicial to that Love and Duty which is owing to the Public, especially when People are actually entrusted by the Public, and sworn to report impartially, without being moved by any Passion whatsoever, what their judgment is concerning a matter of Fact. It may be as injurious to our Country to elude the Design of a Law out of Pity as out of Revenge; and as to Perjury, if we consider it in it self, ’tis as absurd to be guilty of it through Generosity as Bribery, though it may too justly be suspected, that in these Cases the latter generally has a greater Influence than the former. But of this more hereafter.

These are the Reasons which make me conclude that Self-Murther is unlawful, if Man be considered as a Member of any Civil State; which are all of them of greater force, if it be also positively forbidden by the Laws of the State, which I take to be of great Consideration in this part of the Argument. As for the Exceptions or Objections, that are made to this third Division, they also shall be considered in their turn.

CHAP. VIII. Examination of such Objections as are brought to invalidate what was said above concerning Man’s being a Member of Civil Society, and the unlawfulness of Self-murther in this regard also: Application of what has been said to the Coroners Inquest in this Case.

Hitherto I have endeavored to Answer those Objections, which might seem to oppose what I had said to prove Self-murther Unlawful; as Man was considered in the State of Nature: I come now to examine some others which are brought against what has been said to confirm the same, as he is a Member of Civil Society.

First, I must say something to that which was above mentioned, as an Instance of deserting ones self Lawfully.

Self-preservation doth not so rigorously, and urgently, and illimitedly bind, but that by the Law of Nature it self, things may, yea must, neglect themselves for others, of which the Pelican is an Instance. Another Instance he gives of Bees too, from whence he infers, That as this natural Instinct in Beasts, so rectified Reason belonging only to us, instructs us often to prefer public and necessary Persons, by exposing our selves to inevitable Destruction.

We may Lawfully dispossess our selves of that, without which we can have no hopes to sustain our Lives; as in a Shipwreck a private Man may give his Plank to a Magistrate, and the Examples of Codrus, Curtius and the Decij, and the Approbation of the greatest and the wisest Nations, in the Honors which they paid to their Memory, are usually brought in upon this occasion; this is to prove that the Law of Self-preservation may be dispensed withal in regard of serving the Public; and therefore that it may be so as reasonably in any Man’s private Concern, even to the degree of Killing himself: Or thus, there is no difference (as to Self-preservation) between a Man’s Killing himself upon account of the Public, or his own account; now he that dispossesses himself upon the public Account, to save a public Person: Of that, without which he can have no hopes of saving his own Life, Kills himself.

To this may be Answered,

1. That the use of Instinct in Beasts is to Preserve them. It was given them to this End alone, instead of Reason; therefore it is a Contradiction to affirm, that any Beast, Bird, or Insect destroys it self by Instinct, and the Instances here brought to prove this are Fabulous.

2. That the more Reason is rectify in Man, the more he will understand to what End he received Life, and how little Authority he has to dispose of it; and therefore the more carefully will he obey the Law of Self-preservation, and this particularly upon the Consideration of what he owes the Public.

3. That the Law of Self-preservation may not be willfully broken, even upon the Account of the Public. No Man has naturally any Authority to destroy himself for his Country, designedly and positively; but to hazard his Life only.

As to the Instances of Codrus, Curtius, and the Decij, what they did was grounded upon a Religious or Superstitious Persuasion; which they obeyed as Supernatural, and therefore cannot be used to prove what is Naturally Lawful.

The Instance of giving a Magistrate a Plank in a Shipwreck, implies only great hazard of Life, not positive Destruction of it; because there is a possibility of escaping left; and because the intention is not to die, to abandon all care of ones self, but to take care of another first: To make this more plain I will show,

1. What Authority the Public Power, where-ever ’tis placed, has to require any Person to hazard his Life, and what Warrant that Person has to hazard it accordingly.

2. The difference between extreme Hazard and Self-murther.

3. What Authority, &c. In this Consideration I shall have no regard to any one particular State, but only enquire into the End of Government or Civil Society in General, and this with all Submission imaginable. The end of Civil Government is, I suppose, the promoting the same things for many Men together, upon which their true Happiness depended, as considered singly in the State of Nature: this is usually called the Public Good, that is, each Man’s Private Good as he is Man, considered collectively, and with regard to the General Welfare. Private Good being twofold, as hath been shown, Moral and Sensitive; the object of humane Laws must be twofold also, Virtue and Propriety, and the promoting and securing these in Peace from all Enemies, either from without or within any Political Body seems to be the true natural end of Civil Society.

Now as there is Public Good to be secured, so in order to this, there must be Public Power over every particular Subject, lodged in one or more Persons, according as the Form of the Government is; and lest this Power should be either Dangerous or to no Purpose, there must be also Public Judgment, the Result of the Debates of Wise and Upright Men, to limit it and direct it.

Furthermore, whereas every particular State must be considered as one Political Person; in which respect the being of any State is to be looked upon as the Public Life, and the Well-being of the same State, the Public Health: So it must be supposed that the Public Power must be such, as is proper and requisite to defend these, and consequently that it must extend to Particular Life, whenever the Public Life is any ways in danger.

Now this may be endangered two ways, either 1st. By Enemies within the State, Corrupt and Vicious Men, who obstruct and break the Laws, and infect others; in which Case the Public Power extends to the actual Destruction of such particular Mens Lives, as being necessary for the Preservation of all the rest. Or 2dly. It may be endangered from outward Enemies; other Governments that would Enslave or Destroy it: In which Case the Public Power extends to the obliging such as it thinks fitting to hazard their Lives, when ’tis necessary for the Public Preservation: To hazard, I say, not positively destroy themselves, (as when a blow is made at a Man’s Head, he may lift up his Arm to defend it, venture the breaking of it, not positively break it, which he has no right to do) and necessary it may be supposed, sufficiently to warrant any Man’s Obedience, when the Public Judgment declares that it is so.

But the chief Question is, from whence this Power is derived to the Public, by whom it was granted.

Some suppose it to be granted by Man himself, upon a kind of compact for Protection; but though protection may be one great End of this Power; yet it is generally agreed, that this Power cannot be conferred on the Public by every particular Man; because God alone has the absolute Propriety of humane Life: Man has no such Power himself, and what he has not, he cannot make over to another. Mr. Hobbs will have it to come from Man, but then to decline this Objection, and secure his darling Principle of Self-preservation, he says, This is not done by Man’s transferring any right of his own, but by laying down the right which he has to hurt others. His own Words are these, The Subjects did not give their Sovereign that Right; but only in laying down theirs, strengthened him to use his own as he should think fit for the Preservation of them all; so that it was not given but left to him: If I take this right, this is a very odd distinction; for if a Man has any right to hurt others for his own Preservation; then as he is bound to Preserve himself, so he is bound to retain that Right; and yet if he lays it down, he parts with it as much as if he actually gave it away.

He told us just before, That in the making of a Commonwealth every Man gives away the Right of defending another, but not of defending himself. In several Places he repeats and inculcates this, that no Man can ever part with the right of defending himself; no, not after Lawful Trial and Condemnation: If this be so, How can he lay down the right which he has to hurt others, since by so doing he must be left in a great measure defenseless, and liable, by his own Consent, not only to be hurt, but to be actually destroyed, as in all Capital Punishments.

Wherefore, not withstanding Men choose to struggle thus, rather than have any thing to do with God, while they frame their Political Systems: Yet it seems plain that such a Power as we are speaking of can be derived from no other but God, who alone having the absolute Propriety of all humane Life, can alone have the right to give some Men Power over the Lives of others; and who having framed Man in such a manner, that Civil Society is necessary for his Security and Improvement, and yet such Society not to be preserved without such a Power, must upon these Considerations, and also as he is a wife and just Being; and as he who wills the End must will the Means necessary to that End; must, I say, be supposed to grant to the Magistrate such a Power; a Power to hazard Life himself, and to oblige others to do so, in defense of the Public.

From what has been said may appear, that the Power or Authority which any Government has to require Men to hazard their Lives for the Public Good is derived from God himself, that the time and manner of doing this depends upon the Public Judgment; and that Man is thus warranted for hazarding his Life accordingly.

To return then to the Instance above-mentioned, of a Man’s giving a Magistrate his Plank in a Shipwreck: If a Man may hazard his Life for the Public Good, then if there be some particular Person, in whom the Public Power and Public Judgment is lodged, from whom all the Springs of Action derive their Motion, who is in effect the Life, the Soul of the whole Body, and in whom the Liberty and Property (as we love to speak) of many Millions centers and may be lost; and among the rest his Life also, who shall be concerned for this Public Persons safety; then we may conclude, that any Man may hazard his Life even to the utmost danger to preserve such a Person; yet in these Cases we are to remember Life is only hazarded not abandoned, much less positively destroyed; and that for such extreme hazard Men may justly suppose that they have Authority from God himself, as they are Members of any Civil Government.

And though the danger be great, yet ’tis very seldom that Men fall into certain Death upon these Accounts, as might be shown easily.

But suppose it should be so, yet in this Case an honest good Man does not mind any thing but to do his Duty, to pursue faithfully the End for which Life was given; and if Life should be lost in this pursuit, this is not his desire, nor his fault; ’twas not his aim to die, but to do as he ought; nay gladly would he have lived had Life been consistent with his Virtue; but when this came in Question, both Death and Life became indifferent, and though he Chooses neither, he accepts readily of either, as they offer themselves in his way to his Duty.

This I find confirmed by the Schoolmen in a harder Case than any above-mentioned. Suppose a powerful Tyrant should bring the last City of any State to the greatest Extremity, by all the sad Consequences of a long and prosperous Siege; as loss and weariness of Men, Famine, Contention, Corruption; and no hopes of Succor should be left; suppose that after this, he should refuse all Articles of Submission, and should threaten Destruction by Fire and Sword, unless they delivered up to him some one particular innocent Person. This City (say they) may not only deliver him up, though they know him to be Innocent; but that very Person may deliver up himself, and yet without being guilty of destroying himself, because, as above said, his chief end is the doing so much Good, not the Dying; his particular intention, his design that he had in view continually was to save his Country; and this being the only means which was left, he resolves to incur the greatest danger to this purpose; and yet in all this is positive only as to the doing of his Duty, and far from being positive as to the destroying of his Life. To complete this Argument let us now see,

1. How great the difference is between this and Self-murther, and consequently how unreasonably the one is made a plea for the other.

He that hazards Life for the Public does this in obedience to the Laws both of God and Man; he that destroys his own Life does this in disobedience to the Laws of both; the first by observing the true End of Life, does what God and Nature primarily designed as most proper to preserve Life, and if he loses it ’tis by the violence of others; the latter neglecting the true End of Life destroys it willfully by the most positive act of injustice to God, his Country and himself; the first only hazards Life, the latter chooses Death; if the first happens to die ’tis against his will, if the latter lives ’tis against his; and as to the Public, the one dies for it, the other dies against it; not only by deserting it, but by breaking its Laws, and encouraging others to do so, and also by enervating the strictness ties of Kindness, Trust and Justice, which may end at last in the total dissolution of any Government; the Comparison might be carried further, but this may be sufficient to show the unreasonableness of this Conclusion, That because a Man may give a Magistrate his Plank in a Shipwreck therefore he may Murther himself.

The next Objection is to this purpose, That if Self-murther is unjust in regard of the Public, ’tis because it loses a Member; but this may as well be said of all those who retiring themselves from Functions in the Commonwealth, defraud the State of their Assistance, and attend only their own Ends. If the Person be of necessary use to the State, there are in it some degrees of Injustice, but yet no more than if a General of much use should retire into a Monastery. To this may be Answered.

1. That one of the Reasons why Self-murther is unjust to the Public, but not the only one; is its losing a Member.

2. The Instance here given does not come up to the point; for a General may not lay down his Commission without leave, when he is necessary for his Countries Service; but he may justly be punished if he refuses to Act. Yet suppose a Man may retire from Public Affairs to attend his own Ends; Is this as much damage to the Public as Selfmurther? He that attends his own Ends, (if by this be meant his particular Interest as to his Family) contributes to the Public Good, and may do so very considerably, though never so much retired: However the causes of his Retirement may alter, and then he may serve the Public again upon Necessity; or should he not, he may serve and assist his particular Friends and Relations, improve his Knowledge and his Fortune, be an Example of Virtue, and in many other respects observe the end for which Life was given; and this sure cannot be the same with the putting a Man’s self into an unalterable incapacity of doing any good at all, by the willful and positive destruction of Life.

To this it may perhaps be replied, That here Strength and Vigor is required, Health of Body and Activity of Mind; but suppose a Man by extreme Age or Infirmity, by loss some Sense or some Limb, should be made incapable of serving the Public, had not he as good be gone as stay to no purpose, may not he leave the World if he pleases when he is become good for nothing.

This Supposition seems to be grounded upon a very gross sense of serving the Public; as if States-men were to be chosen by the breadth of their Shoulders, and strong and sizeable Men were as necessary for the Council Table as the Guard Room; for if Men be past Reason the Dispute is at an end, but if they are capable of using it, why should old Age be objected, unless Maturity and Experience should be disadvantages? When Reason is lost, no Man can be accountable for Self-murther, or any other Action, yet even then we preserve Life carefully in Idiots and Madmen at the Public Expense; either in hopes of their recovery, or to learn to value Reason as we ought, or to praise the giver of it, so that there is scarce any Wretch but may be some way or other beneficial to the Public, even by his being alive alone; how much more may he be so when Reason remains, and that too so highly valued and well understood, that Men will choose sooner to part with Life than remain deprived of the glorious advantage of it? Or if this should not be allowed, what Rule can be given? What degree of Age or Infirmity can be fixed, when Men shall be judged to be good for nothing, and permitted to Murther themselves accordingly? Such a thing (if possible) might prevent it indeed, since Men would be apt to live in despite of all their Miseries, rather than buy the privilege of Self-murther at so dear a rate, as to be judged by others, and be obliged to acknowledge themselves, that they are good for nothing.

But while Reason remains, as I said before, this is impossible, and many Instances may be given of Persons who have done their Country the most considerable Service under all these Calamities above-mentioned, nay at the very time of Death it self. The whole Senate of Rome had once so basely degenerated as to surrender up tamely their Liberty and their Glory, in that dishonorable Peace which they had unanimously resolved to conclude with Pyrrhus: When Appius Claudius who had been absent from Public Affairs, through extreme Age, Blindness and Lameness, for many Years, as soon as he heard of it, caused himself to be carried to the House, and bravely upbraided them with their Cowardice and Perfidiousness to their Country: What Man had ever such appearances of being past serving the Public, or being good for nothing; and yet how vigorous was his Soul in so decrepit a Body? One would think the Genius of Rome, chased out from the degenerate Senate, had retired for shelter under the Ruins of this great old Man. ‘Tis certain that if he had not had so many Infirmities he would have been less regarded, but the fight of these made his Zeal surprising; raised their Attention with their Admiration, and gave every Word a peculiar force to restore them to their Courage and their Reason as unanimously as they had rebelled against both before: This made his Infirmities numbered in after Ages among his Trophies, and Coecus a more glorious distinction than Asiaticus, Africanus, &c. for they who had those Titles, only added Vast and Luxurious Provinces to their Country, which proved the Destruction of it at last; but Appius conquered its most dreadful Enemy, and saved it, for that time, from it self. The great Father Paul a few Minutes before his Death, after he had been long weakened by Age and Sickness, had three Cases of very great Importance sent to him, by the Senate of Venice, to each of which he gave his Opinions, and that wise Assembly followed them accordingly. In these Instances there was not only a complication of Calamities, but Death it self, had almost taken Possession, and yet neither, made them past serving of the Public.

What shall be pretended then for the loss of any one Sense? as the Stoics do; Shall this be taken for a certain Sign of being past doing good? And consequently a reasonable Plea for Self-murther; and shall that be acted accordingly? Had it been so always, how much Instruction and Delight would Mankind have been deprived of, had Homer —-Nay had Milton done so, the World had lost that admirable Poem? Oh, had he made but as good use of his Eyes!

‘Tis true few Persons are qualified for such great Performances, but these Instances may show that such Calamities, as above-mentioned, do not make all Men past serving of their Country, or good for nothing; and that if such Pretences were allowed for Self-murther in one Person, they must be so in another; and if so, that this may prove very hurtful to any State, nay possibly to the whole World.

But after all, it may be further Objected, If a Man has leave from the Public to Murther himself, he does it no Injury; this leave has frequently been granted by the Roman Senate, and at Marseilles a Vessel of Poison was kept ready at the Public Charge, for those to whom they gave Permission to Murther themselves. This Custom may be of use to us so far in this Argument as to prove that these People thought that no Man who lived in a Civil State had right over his own Life, but the Public had a claim to it, which is very true in its proper Limitation; but then this was not such a claim as is grounded upon absolute Propriety; such as gives a Power to dispose of any thing when and how it pleases; because the right which the Public has over particular Life is only for security of Public Life, grounded upon Self-defense, and never to be made use of but in extreme Necessity; as for the cutting off a corrupted part, or for the opposing open Violence: Wherefore this Right being grounded only upon this Foundation, for any Political Body to pretend to give leave to any Innocent Person to kill himself, is as absurd as for any Man to give his right Hand leave to cut off his left when it ails nothing, or to wound himself in any other sound part. In a Word; this would be both Folly and Usurpation, for had the Public this absolute Right, all Complaints of Tyranny and Oppression would be very unreasonable?

But after all what do such Instances as these signify to Us, or to any Nation which does not grant the same Permission: If the Matter were to be determined by Humane Laws; we of this Nation (not to mention others) are forbid it under the strictest Penalties.

But here our Author tells us again, If our Law be severe in punishing of it, and that this Argument has the more strength, because more Nations concur in such Laws: It may well from hence be retorted, that every where Men are inclinable to it, which establishes much our Opinion, says he, considering that none of those Laws, which prescribe Civil restraints from doing it, can make it Sin; and that Act is not much discredited if it be therefore Evil, because it is so forbidden, and binds the Conscience no further but under the general Precept of obedience to the Law or the Forfeiture.—Here are three things advanced;

1. That the General Concurrence of Nations in any Law proves a General Inclination in Mankind to the committing of the thing forbidden; and therefore that that thing is Natural. This I think is very strange! All Nations concur in severe Laws against Murthering of Princes, Husbands, Fathers, against betraying Forts, Ships, &c. Now does this prove a General Inclination of People to these Crimes? No certainly; but it proves a general abhorrence and detestation of them, and the ill Consequences of them to Mankind; and therefore is an undeniable Argument of such things being unnatural.

2. We are told that none of those Laws which prescribe Civil Restraints from doing it (i.e. Self-Murther) can make it Sin, and the Act is not much discredited if it be therefore Evil because it is so forbidden.

The Law of any Land does not make Self-murther to be a Sin or Evil, but found it so, ’tis really so by the Law of Nature, as I hope has been shown; ’tis declared to be so by positive Laws, to put Men in mind of it, to save them the trouble of reasoning it out, and to deter them from committing it, by the threats of immediate Punishment; and that which was thus founded in Nature, and afterwards commanded by Man’s Law brings a new obligation upon the Conscience, for if humane Laws concerning things indifferent in their own Nature (which forbid an Action which a Man might be otherwise free to do, or command one which he might be otherwise free to omit) do oblige us, as every one allows, then how much more must they do so when they forbid a thing which is not indifferent but naturally unlawful, and which a Man was obliged to forbear before; and so on the contrary: If this be so, that must also be a mistake which is affirmed.

3. That humane Laws which forbid Self-murther bind the Conscience no further, but under the General Precept of Obedience to the Law, or else to the Forfeiture.

When a Civil Punishment is affix to that which is a Natural Evil, a Man is not left at liberty to choose to suffer the one for acting the other; particularly in the Case of Self-murther; because a Man was obliged in Conscience before the humane Law was made, and because the Punishment (in this Case especially, of all others) is by no means adequate to the Crime; besides if a Man may choose the Punishment, then the Law of Man instead of enforcing the Law of Nature, would only be the convenience of evading it. Wherefore as this distinction is unjust, so is it most pernicious to all Civil Governments.

Yet after all; supposing that it should be lawful to choose the Civil Punishment, for the committing that which is Naturally Evil: How shall this reach the Offender, as to Self-murther? This can affect him no otherwise, than as to his Dead Body, or his Posterity; and therefore how false is this Pretence at the Bottom? And how base is this detestable Action? whereby a Wretch breaks the Laws of God and his Country, and exposes his best and dearest Friends, his next Relations, nay his Children often, to suffer the Punishment due to his Crime. If in excuse for this it should be said, That such People may be supposed to satisfy themselves with hopes of the Punishments being escaped by their Heirs, either through Friendship, Compassion, Bribery, &c. If, I say, this should be alleged, then certainly it is very well worthy of Consideration, whether the putting of those Laws duly and constantly in Execution, which are provided in this Case, would not be of very great force to put a stop to this Evil? The Consideration of shame alone did this heretofore in the Case of the Milesians, and the Romans also under Tarquinius Priscus: Our Laws then may do this more effectually; which allowing but the same Burial which other Felons have, and requiring the Forfeiture of the Personal Estate, have not only the Natural tye of shame, but a much stronger, that of tenderness to their Posterity, to restrain such Rash and Melancholy Creatures by.

And this leads me to apply my self particularly to the Coroner and his Inquest upon these sad Occasions. For although somewhat of this kind has been done lately by an ingenious Author; yet the Nature of his Design (I suppose) not suffering him to enlarge upon it, there seems to be room left for something to be added.

I will first then give some Account of the Duty of the Coroner and his Jury, and what the Law directs, and upon what Grounds, (as I have been informed) in this Case: And afterwards show the unreasonable of those Prejudices or Pretences which Men are apt to be swayed by, notwithstanding these great Obligations.

As to the first, When the Coroner has notice, that any one is come to a violent and untimely Death; he is to Summon and Impanel a Jury out of the Neighborhood, and administer this Oath to them.

You shall Swear, that you shall well and truly inquire, and true Presentment make of all such matters and things as shall be given you in Charge, on the behalf of our Sovereign Lord the King, touching the Death of A. B. So Help you God.

As to the Matters and Things here mentioned, these are Explained farther to them by the Coroner in his Charge; Then they are to find out the manner of the Persons Death, whether by Drowning, Strangling, Wounds received, or otherwise; whether by another or himself, if by himself, whether he was Felo de se, or non Compos mentis.

And to this End they are to be directed and assisted by the Depositions of those whom the Coroner Summons to give Evidence, or by the hearing of the Council, which is sometimes brought upon these Occasions. What is meant by being non Compos; the Law informs them, that it is the deprivation of Reason or Understanding: Such a state of the Mind wherein there is a Cessation from Exercising the Discursive Faculty. That there are four sorts of Persons which the Law looks upon to be non Compos. 1. An Idiot or Natural Fool. 2. One that has been of Good and Sound Memory, but by the Visitation of God has lost it. 3. A Lunatic who has Intervals. 4. One who becomes Mad, by his own Act, through Excessive Drinking. Upon the Verdict of non Compos the Goods and Chattels of the Deceased are to be enquired after, valued immediately, as if they were to be sold and delivered to the Kings use; and the Body refused Christian Burial. The reason of which Punishment is said to be, because Self-murther is an Offence against Nature, it being the Property of every thing to preserve it self; against God, for that it offends his Commandment; against the King, for that he loses a Subject, and an ill Example is given to the rest. All which have been explained and enforced in the former part of this Treatise.

We may see here the Authority, by which the Coroner and his Jury Act, the Nature of their Duty, and the great Trust reposed in them, as also the Laws Interpretation of non Compos, the Punishment that is threatened, and the Ground and Intent of the Law: All Which every one of the Jury is obliged to observe by the sacred Bond of a Solemn Oath; and this one would suppose might be sufficient to cause any honest Man to make true Presentment, deliver in his Verdict in such a Case Impartially; yet it is found to be otherwise by Experience. Wherefore.

1. I come to show the unreasonableness of those Prejudices and Pretences by which Men are usually swayed in this Matter; and in so doing I shall not look upon my self (being to talk with another sort of People now) to be confined to Natural Principles only.

2. Is a General Supposition that every one who kills himself is non Compos, and that no body would do such an Action unless he were Distracted; this will be found unreasonable if we consider,

3. That if this were really so, then it would be to no purpose for the Law to appoint any enquiry to be made in such Cases: If a Man may not be supposed to be in his Wits when he lays violent Hands upon himself, to what intent is the Summoning in of so many Men, the giving them a Solemn Oath, examining Witnesses, hearing Council; all this supposes the Case doubtful; but according to that Opinion all this is vain and impertinent, because they have nothing left to judge of.

4. If this were so, then our Laws are not only Impertinent but Unjust, by affixing a Punishment to such an Act, as the Person that commits it cannot help: He that is Distracted knows not what he does, and therefore is not Accountable for this or any other Deed; since then the Laws of this Nation, and of many others of great Reputation for Wisdom and Justice (as shall be shown immediately) have ordained a Punishment for this Action, it is plain that they thought it might possibly be committed Willfully, and Advisedly; and if so, ’tis Confidence and Presumption for any private Person to suppose the contrary.

5. This will appear farther if we consider the several Explications of the Words Non Compos above-mentioned, particularly the third concerning Lunatics: If a Person known to be Lunatic several Years, be also known to have had several Intervals, he shall be liable to the Law, unless it be plainly proved that he was distempered at the very time of killing himself: How much more if a Man has never been known to have been Lunatic at all. As to the 4th sort of Madness above-mentioned, the Law does not look upon this as an Excuse for any Crime committed in that Condition; because it was the Parties own voluntary Act to bring himself into it. However this may be of Use to judge of other kinds of Madness by: Which People may be supposed to be affected withal in this Case; it very seldom appears that they who destroy themselves have had the same or as great signs of Distraction, as are frequently caused by excessive Drinking, or supposing they may have had so, yet let the Juror consider whether this may not be caused as much through the Parties own fault as the other; whether he did not bring upon himself, or give way to the beginning of his Discontent; whether he did not willfully foment and increase it, and at last stubbornly persist in it. Let him also consider whether he would have excused the same Person for killing another Man, upon those very signs of Madness which move him now to excuse him for killing himself: I believe this may be one good Rule for an honest Juror to walk by, especially since the killing of ones self has been shown above, to be rather worse in regard of the Public, than the killing of another Man.

Yet after all, how oft does it appear in these Cases, that the Person concerned did give plain and certain Signs of a good Understanding (I mean Naturally, not Morally so) by some Circumstances of his Death or other: Some have enquired what was the easiest way of Dying, or where to place the Weapon best; others have used much cunning and contrivance to procure the Instrument, have kept it long by them, and warily chosen a proper Time and Place to make use of it; others again have made their Wills, or settled their Affairs otherways; taken leave of their Friendssolemnly, sent those out of the way that might have hindered them; these and such like Circumstances are Arguments of Deliberation and Advisedness, and prove sufficiently that such a Person was Compos Mentis.

If it be Moral and not Natural Madness that is here meant, not only he that commits any other great Crime, but he that subverts a Lawful Government, by a long train of well laid Designs, though he cannot be suspected of any Natural defect of Understanding, yet is as much Mad in this sense as any one that kills himself can be supposed to be; and yet sure this would not be allowed as an Excuse for so doing. But this sort of Madness does not fall under the Coroners Inquest in the present Case: Moral Madness is the misapplication of the Understanding, not the total Deprivation of it, and the Question here is not whether the Understanding was misapplied, but whether there was any Understanding left at all: This brings me to some other kind of Pretences, which are caused chiefly,

1. By mistaking the Subject of their enquiry, and making themselves Judges of that which does not belong to them; their Duty consists in enquiring well and truly how the Person came by his Death, if by himself, whether he was felo de se, or non Compos, and in making true Presentment accordingly. This is what they are Sworn to do; but instead of this they are apt to run out beyond their Bounds, and consider what the Event of their Verdict will be, either as to the Forfeiture, or the Person Deceased.

2. As to the Forfeiture, they are sometimes mightily concerned about this; What will become of it? Upon whom shall it be bestowed? Upon such perhaps as do not want it, or among so many that it will do them little or no Good; whereas in the lump it might be of great advantage to the next Heirs: Why is not Charity due to them as much as mere Strangers, &c. To this may be replied,

3. That which is thus forfeited devolves to the Lord Almoner, the distributor of His Majesties Alms, according to his Direction; and therefore they ought to be satisfied that it will be disposed of Judiciously and Faithfully.

4. Supposing the worst, what is this to the Coroner or any of his Jury; the Law has not made them Judges in this matter, or given them Authority to consider what will be most convenient and proper to be done with that which is Forfeited, or who are the best Objects of Charity: They are called to Judge of matter of Fact by what they see and hear. Let them remember their Oaths, they are not Sworn to be Charitable but to be Just, to enquire well and truly, diligently and impartially concerning the Fact, and to give their Judgment according to their Conscience; and therefore a good Man ought to be upon his Guard against such Insinuations as these, and to take care lest his Charity should absurdly corrupt his Justice; absurdly I say, for he that is Just, (in Criminal Causes especially,) is Charitable in the Noblest way; for whilst his Impartial Sentence deters others from committing the same Crime, his Charity extends not only to all the Innocent and Virtuous of the Present Age, but to late Posterity.

Again some run out beyond their Limits and fall into Mistakes, by considering the Event of their Judgment as to the Parties Reputation, and their being Guilty of Uncharitableness in this regard; they think that to bring him in Felo de se, would be to pronounce him damned, therefore that they ought to Judge Charitably, especially, since they could not see into his Heart, or discover his last thoughts.

This would not need an Answer, but that Ignorant, though well meaning People are often concerned upon these Occasions, and apt to receive such Scruples from Cunning Solicitors, that are always busy about them, if the Chattels are worth the saving: Therefore something must be said to it.

1. Then the Jurors bringing in the Deceased Felo de se, does not pronounce him damned at all, this he leaves to God alone; whatever his Judgment of the Fact is, it can be neither the better nor the worse for him in the next World; his Impartial Verdict does not alter the Nature of the Fact: If he thinks him Guilty, yet he does not contribute to his being so, and what he thinks; he is obliged to declare by Lawful Authority; and if he does not so, is Guilty himself of Breach of Trust towards his Country, and of Perjury towards his God.

2. As to the seeing into his Thoughts, the difficulty of doing so, and the Judging Charitably upon this Account: This seems very little to the purpose: In indifferent Actions, or such as will bear a double Interpretation; we ought to beware how we Judge to the disadvantage of our Neighbor, especially when not called by Lawful Authority; but where a Man is so called; where there is a Notorious Transgression of the Law, as in the present Case, the Fact is so evidently Evil, that there needs no weighing of the thoughts, or searching of what kind they were; especially since, when a Person is found to have killed himself, the Question is not what his Thoughts were, but whether he had any Thought at all, that is whether he was Mad or no?

Yet after all, though I have hitherto applied my self to the Jury, ’tis certain that their Verdict depends much upon the Coroner, and ’tis his fault chiefly if the Laws which provide against Self-murther, are eluded; ’tis he that Summons whom he pleases to be of the Jury, and to these he gives what Charge he pleases; the Examination of the Witnesses, the Summing up the Evidence is done by him: So that unless there happen to be upon the Jury Men of Conscience, Courage and Understanding (which may easily be avoided if the Coroner thinks fitting) they will be apt to be led by him implicitly. And there being no Fee allowed upon Felo de se, the Verdicts being for the King; and a Gratuity seldom wanting when it is for the Heirs; ’tis no wonder that the Return is generally Non Compos.

But if these Papers should ever fall into the Hands of any of these Gentlemen; I entreat them to Consider seriously the trust that is reposed in them, they being Chosen by the Freeholders of their several Counties, as Parliament Men are; and what the Consequence will be (even to after Ages) of the breach of such Trust: And to themselves especially, if they believe any thing of another World: For to omit the Suspicions of Corruption which I am very loath to improve; whatever the Motive is, through which the Design of any Law is Eluded; the Consequence will be much the same: If a Law be made to restrain a dreadful Sin, which is withal very pernicious to the State, and such or such a Punishment is appointed to this End; if this Law becomes of no force by that very Persons Preventing the Punishment, who is entrusted by his Country to see the Law Executed: Let this be done out of Compassion, Generosity, or what you please; all the increase of the Sin forbidden, so heinous in its own Nature, and so pernicious to the Public, he will have a share in; and if he be guilty of Perjury, if he betray his Country, not only in the Present Age, but is false to Posterity also: What will it signify that this was done out of Charity or Generosity to one or two Persons, who perhaps did not need it: Or if they did never so much, how preposterous must that Charity be, which to assist a few, as to Temporal Conveniences, shall contribute to the Damnation of many Souls, and make a Man venture through Treachery and Perjury to hazard his own.

If these Considerations, and others of the like kind, should not prevail with these Persons so much as immediate Punishment: The Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench, for the time being, is, as I am told, the chief Coroner of England, enquiries into Failures of this kind, may be made in that Court, and this Consideration ought to terrify every one who shall be thus concerned, especially at this time, since that Important Trust was never discharged with more profound Knowledge of our Laws, and with greater Integrity than at Present.

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Filed under Adams, John, Europe, Protestantism, Selections, The Early Modern Period

by Archive Librarian | · 5:23 pm

SAMUEL PEPYS
(1633-1703)

from Diary

Samuel Pepys was born in London of humble origin, but through his skill, motivation, and patronage became an important man of his time. A series of government positions, most of them in the Navy department, eventually culminated in appointment to the secretaryship of the Admiralty and his first term in Parliament in 1673. He renewed the English Navy, controlling the largest spending budget of the state, and eventually doubled the strength of the Navy’s force. Pepys’s personal standards of efficiency, industry, and confidence established a distinguished administrative tradition, but they also bought him several enemies. In 1679, Pepys spent some months in the Tower of London after being falsely accused of treason by Lord Shaftesbury. He was elected president of the Royal Society in 1684 and moved in circles that included such thinkers as Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, and John Dryden, as well as nearly all the great scholars of the period. After his retirement in 1689, he worked on his Memories of the Royal Navy (1690).

Pepys is most known for his Diary (not published until 1825), composed during the decade of the 1660s. In the Diary, he describes Reformation England with great art and explicitness, both revealing small details of his daily life and exploring large perspectives of the time. Historical events, such as the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, the Dutch War, and accounts of famous people, such as Charles II, are woven into a rich and detailed narrative. Pepys wrote extensively in his Diary until 1669, when his eyesight failed him and his wife Elizabeth died. Pepys’s entire library, with its books arranged by size, remains intact—with neither additions nor deletions permitted—at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

This selection from the Diary for January 21, 1668, and following days is Pepys’s account of the suicide attempt of his cousin Kate Joyce’s husband, a tavern-keeper, and his own attempt to protect the estate from forfeiture to the Crown, as the law required in cases of suicide. Pepys’s observations are significant for their account of the effects of England’s forfeiture laws on a suicide’s family.

Source

Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1668. Transcribed from the Shorthand Manuscript In The Pepysian Library Magdalene College Cambridge By The Rev. Mynors Bright. Project Gutenberg Release #4195. Entries for January 21, 22, 24, 1668.

from DIARY: JANUARY 21ST, 22ND, and 24TH, 1668

21st. Up, and while at the office comes news from Kate Joyce that if I would see her husband alive, I must come presently. So, after the office was up, I to him, and W. Hewer with me, and find him in his sick bed (I never was at their house, this Inne, before) very sensible in discourse and thankful for my kindness to him, and his breath rattled in his throate, and they did lay pigeons to his feet while I was in the house, and all despair of him, and with good reason. But the story is that it seems on Thursday last he went sober and quiet out of doors in the morning to Islington, and behind one of the inns, the White Lion, did fling himself into a pond, was spied by a poor woman and got out by some people binding up hay in a barn there, and set on his head and got to life, and known by a woman coming that way; and so his wife and friends sent for. He confessed his doing the thing, being led by the Devil; and do declare his reason to be, his trouble that he found in having forgot to serve God as he ought, since he come to this new employment: and I believe that, and the sense of his great loss by the fire, did bring him to it, and so everybody concludes. He stayed there all that night, and come home by coach next morning, and there grew sick, and worse and worse to this day. I stayed awhile among the friends that were there, and they being now in fear that the goods and estate would be seized on, though he lived all this while, because of his endeavouring to drown himself, my cozen did endeavour to remove what she could of plate out of the house, and desired me to take my flagons; which I was glad of, and did take them away with me in great fear all the way of being seized; though there was no reason for it, he not being dead, but yet so fearful I was. So home, and there eat my dinner, and busy all the afternoon, and troubled at this business. In the evening with Sir D. Gawden, to Guild Hall, to advise with the Towne-Clerke about the practice of the City and nation in this case: and he thinks that it cannot be found self-murder; but if it be, it will fall, all the estate, to the King. So we parted, and I to my cozens again; where I no sooner come but news was brought down from his chamber that he was departed. So, at their entreaty, I presently took coach to White Hall, and there find Sir W. Coventry; and he carried me to the King, the Duke of York being with him, and there told my story which I had told him: and the King, without more ado, granted that, if it was found, the estate should be to the widow and children. I presently to each Secretary’s office, and there left caveats, and so away back again to my cozens, leaving a chimney on fire at White Hall, in the King’s closet; but no danger. And so, when I come thither, I find her all in sorrow, but she and the rest mightily pleased with my doing this for them; and, indeed, it was a very great courtesy, for people are looking out for the estate, and the coroner will be sent to, and a jury called to examine his death. This being well done to my and their great joy, I home, and there to my office, and so to supper and to bed.

22nd. Up, mightily busy all the morning at the office. … after dinner to my cozen Kate’s, and there find the Crowner’s jury sitting, but they could not end it, but put off the business to Shrove Tuesday next, and so do give way to the burying of him, and that is all; but they all incline to find it a natural death, though there are mighty busy people to have it go otherwise, thinking to get his estate, but are mistaken. Thence, after sitting with her and company a while, comforting her: though I can find she can, as all other women, cry, and yet talk of other things all in a breath.…

24th. … I to St. Andrew’s church, in Holburne, at the ‘Quest House, where the company meets to the burial of my cozen Joyce; and here I staid with a very great rabble of four or five hundred people of mean condition, and I staid in the room with the kindred till ready to go to church, where there is to be a sermon of Dr. Stillingfleete, and thence they carried him to St. Sepulchre’s. But it being late, and, indeed, not having a black cloak to lead her [Kate Joyce] with, or follow the corps, I away, and saw, indeed, a very great press of people follow the corps.…

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by Archive Librarian | · 5:22 pm

JOHN LOCKE
(1632–1704)

from The Second Treatise of Government
Of the State of Nature
Of Slavery

John Locke was born in Wrington, Somersetshire, in 1632 and was raised by his father, an attorney in Pensford. Because of frail health, his early education was completed at home, but he later attended Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1658, he was elected to teach philosophy and Greek, but he found the subjects uninteresting and soon switched his focus to medicine. Locke was made a fellow of the Royal Society after his work in natural and experimental science with scientists such as Robert Boyle. Locke became the physician to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, whose friendship influenced him to enter politics. When Shaftesbury fell from the king’s favor in 1675, Locke moved to France for four years, where he met philosophers who helped to shape his epistemological theories. Shaftesbury fled to Holland after James II became king, where he died; a few months later, Locke also fled to Holland, suspected of complicity in the Rye House Plot. Locke remained in the Netherlands until 1688; during this time, he produced many of his most important writings. He returned to England after the revolution of 1688, when William of Orange became king, and served for 11 years as commissioner of trade and plantations. Locke’s last years were spent with friends at the Masham estate in Essex, where he was the intellectual leader of the Whigs and instituted many governmental reforms; he died there in 1704. Locke’s intellectual influence was far-reaching: he laid the epistemological foundations for modern science, influenced the Declaration of Independence and other foundational documents for the new United States, and contributed to the start of the empiricist tradition and the Age of Enlightenment and Reason in England and France.

During a discussion with friends about ethics and religion, Locke proposed to try to determine what questions human understanding could and could not address. The first drafts of his attempts date as early as 1671; the result—some 17 years later—was called the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), a general theory of knowledge and language. Knowledge, Locke argues, is formed out of the accumulation of everyday sensations—this is a central tenet of empiricism; “innate” knowledge is inconceivable.

In the Two Treatises of Government (1689), Locke outlines the principles of politics. He rejects the idea of the divine right of kings and introduces the concept of a social contract: it is the consent of the people that is the basis of the right to rule. While for Locke, claims to self-ownership ground property rights in the labor of one’s body, self-ownership is nevertheless limited. As is clear in the passage presented here, God is the ultimate owner of one’s body:

For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and
infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one Sovereign Master,
sent into the world by his order, and about his business;
they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last
during his, not one another’s pleasure.

This central argument is supplemented by another descended from Plato [q.v], that one ought “not to quit his station willfully,” that is, one ought not desert the post to which God has appointed him. On both grounds, one is not free to end one’s own life, and one is not free to place oneself in a position where another may take it.

Although in the section “On Slavery” Locke reiterates his view that a man does not have “the power of his own life,” that is, the moral authority to take his own life, he does note that a man convicted of a capital crime—who by his act has forfeited his own life, and whose sentence is delayed by being forced into penal servitude—is able to hasten his death sentence after all by refusing to obey his master. The slave can thus “draw on himself the death he desires,” that is, bring about the ending of his life by provoking others into executing him. Is this a moral argument, perhaps one that, in asserting the claim that in exploiting a convict for slave labor the master “does him no injury,” also implies that because the condemned man’s life is already forfeit, he (unlike other persons) is therefore no longer under an obligation to preserve it? Or is it simply an observation about the practical possibilities for a slave to avoid a life of intolerable hardship? The question of whether this passage is neutral as to the morality of hastening one’s own death sentence remains open to discussion.

Source

John Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government,” Ch. 2, sections 4, 6; Ch. 4, sections 22-23, from Two Treatises of Government, second edition, ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960, pp. 287-289, 301-302 [original text only; apparatus not used; spelling and punctuation modernized]. Available from Project Gutenberg Release #7370.

from THE SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT

Of the State of Nature

To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

A state also of equality wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident, than that the creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all, should by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty…

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker; all the servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure And being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

Of Slavery

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule. The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it. Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, Observations, A. 55. a liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws; but freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death; he, to whom he has forfeited it, may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it:. For, whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, ‘tis in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he desires.

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by Archive Librarian | · 5:21 pm

SAMUEL VON PUFENDORF
(1632-1694)

from Of the Law of Nature and Nations

Samuel von Pufendorf was born into a long line of Lutheran clergy in Saxony. He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Jena, shifting from early studies in theology to philosophy, philology, history, and law. While he was working as a tutor for the Swedish ambassador in Copenhagen, Denmark, war broke out between the two countries; Pufendorf was subsequently arrested and spent eight months in prison. During this time, he began his first book on the principles of law.

Seven years later, at the request of the king of Sweden, Pufendorf took up a full professorship at the University of Lund. It was here that Pufendorf published his major work, Of the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). By examining national and international law, Pufendorf argued that every individual, by virtue of his or her innate human dignity, had a right to freedom and equality. In believing that self-interest is the source of action in society, he viewed slavery as unnatural and unreasonable. Pufendorf was influenced by Thomas Hobbes, who also placed emphasis on “nature” as a basis for ethical relationships. Unlike Hobbes, however, Pufendorf assumed that the state of nature is peaceful, not hostile. Pufendorf held the secular view that natural law and ethical principles stem from human reason, and that law and ethics should concern man in his social context.

In the section entitled “On the Duties of Man Towards Himself in the Cultivation of His Mind as Well as in the Care of His Body and of His Life,” Pufendorf addresses the specific matters of “whether there be any obligation to preserve one’s life” and “whether suicide be lawful” by analyzing the works of previous philosophers, many of whose views he rejects. In this discussion, which provides evidence of his voluminous scholarship, he appears to answer secular arguments with religious ones, arguing that suicide is an injury to God and to the human race, and insists that the law of nature requires self-preservation. He considers situations in which one person takes risks to save the life of another, or where a disgraceful death may be avoided, or where a person lets himself be killed by another, but denies “the absolute power of a man over his own life.”

In 1677, Pufendorf abandoned his writings on law and went to Stockholm where he became the royal historiographer, writing a 33-volume history of Sweden. In 1688, he moved to Berlin where he continued to write histories. Pufendorf’s works were standards for students of history and law, but fell into obscurity after the 18th century.

Source

Samuel von Pufendorf [Puffendorf], Of the Law of Nature and Nations, tr. Basil Kennett, 3rd ed. Printed for R. Sare, R. Bonwicke, T. Goodwyn, J. Walthoe, M. Wotton, S. Manschip, R. Wilkin, B. Tooke, R. Smith, T. Ward, and W. Churchill, London 1717. Book II, Ch. 4, sections 16-19: “The Duties of Man with Regard to Himself,” pp. 177-182. Spelling modernized; internal citations, footnotes and Greek passages deleted.

from OF THE LAW OF NATURE AND NATIONS

On the Duties of Man Towards Himself in the Cultivation of his Mind as well as in the Care of his Body and of his Life

How passionately every man loves his own life, and how heartily he studies the security and preservation of it, is evident beyond dispute. But it will admit of a debate whether the bare natural instinct which he enjoys in common with beasts, inclines him to these desires; or whether he is not engaged in them by some superior command of the law of nature. For, in as much as no one can, in a legal sense, stand obliged to himself, such a law seems to be of no force or significance which is terminated in my self, which I can dispense with when I please, and by the breach of which I do no one an injury. Besides, it looks like a needless thing to establish a law about this point, since the anxious tenderness of self-love would beforehand drive us so forcibly on the care of our own safety, as to render it almost impossible for us to act otherwise. If then a man were born only for himself, we confess it would be convenient that he should be left entirely to his own disposal, and be allowed to do whatever he pleased with himself. But since by the universal consent of all wise men it is acknowledged, that the Almighty Creator made man to serve him, and to set forth his glory in a more illustrious manner, by improving the good things committed to his trust; and since Society, for which a man is sent into the world, cannot be well exercised and maintained, unless every one, as much as in him lies, takes care of his own preservation; (the safety of the whole society of mankind, being a thing unintelligible, if the safety of each particular member were an indifferent point), it manifestly appears, that a man by throwing aside all care of his own life, though he cannot properly be said to injure himself, yet is highly injurious both to Almighty God, and to the general body of mankind.

It was not rightly inferred in the argument that we just now mentioned, that the law of nature did not concern itself with this matter, because instinct did before drive us on the like good resolution. We should rather imagine, that the force of instinct was superadded (as an able second) to the dictate of reason; as if this help alone could scarce make a tie strong enough to keep mankind together. For indeed, if we reflect on the troubles and miseries that constantly wait on human life, and do so far outweigh that little and mean portion of pleasure, which through a perpetual repetition, grows every day more flat and languid, so that we must needs loath it in every enjoyment; and if we consider farther, how many men have their days prolonged only to make them capable of more misfortunes and evils; who is there, almost, who would not rid himself of the burden of life, as soon as possible, if instinct did not render it so light and so sweet; or unless so much bitterness or so much terror were joined to our notion of death? And yet who is there almost who would not break through the bare opposition of instinct, had not the command of our Creator secured us with a much stronger bar and restraint? ‘Nature,’ says Quintillian, ‘hath invented this chief device for the preservation of mankind, to make us die unwillingly, thus enabling us to bear so vast a load of misfortunes as falls to our share, with some patience and quiet.’ And Socrates in Xenophon declares it to be … the artifice of a wise workman, or builder, ‘to have implanted in men a Desire of producing offspring; in women a desire of nursing and bringing them up; and in all, when brought up, a vast desire of living, and as a great a fear of death.’ And this last motive is the main security of every man from the violence of others. For how easy were it to kill, were it not so hard to die? Hence he presently becomes master of other men’s lives, who hath once arrived at the contempt of his own. And the regard that others have to their own safety, is the best defence of mine.

‘Tis a question of more difficulty, whether at all, or how far a man hath power over his own life, either to expose it to extreme danger, or to consume it by slow means and degrees or lastly, to end it in sudden and violent manner. Many of the Ancients allowed a man an absolute right in these points, and thought he might either voluntarily offer his life as a pledge for another’s, or devote it freely, without any such design of preserving the life of his friend; or whenever he grew weary of living, might prevent the tardiness of nature and fate. Pliny calls the ability to kill one’s self, the most excellent convenience, in the midst of so many torments of life. Whom we can by no means excuse from flat impiety, for daring to think so abjectly of the greatest gift of Heaven. It is our business to examine what seems most agreeable in this case, to the law of nature. And here we may take it first of all to be true beyond dispute, that since men both can and ought to apply their pains to the help and service of another; and since some certain kinds of labour, and an overstraining earnestness in any, may so affect the strength and vigour of a man, as to make old age and death come on much sooner, than if he had passed his days in softness, and in easy pursuits; any one may, without fault, voluntarily contract his life in some degree, upon account of obliging mankind more signally, by some extraordinary services and benefits. For since we do not only live to our selves, but to God, and to human society; if either the glory of our Creator, or the safety and good of the general community require the spending of our lives, we ought willingly to lay them out on such excellent uses. Pompey the Great, in a time of famine at Rome, when the officer who had the care of transporting the corn, as well as all his other friends, entreated him not to venture to sea in so stormy a season, nobly answered them, That I should go ‘tis necessary, but not that I should live. And Achilles in Homer, when his fate was put to his choice, preferred a hasty death in the glorious adventures of war, to the longest period of age, to be passed idly and ingloriously at home.

Farther, in as much as it frequently happens, that the lives of many men cannot be preserved, unless others expose themselves, on their behalf, to a probable danger of losing their own; this makes it evident, that the lawful governour may lay an injunction on any man in such cases, not to decline the danger upon pain of the severest punishment. And on this principle is founded the obligation of soldiers, which we shall enlarge upon in its proper place. ‘Tis a noble saying of Socrates in Plato’s Apology, In whatever station a man is fixed, either by his own choice, as judging it the best, or by the command of his superior; in that he ought resolutely to continue, and to undergo any danger that may assault him there; reckoning neither death nor any other evil so grievous, as cowardice and infamy.

Nor doth it seem at all repugnant either to natural reason, or to the Holy Scriptures, (which command us to lay down our lives for our brethren) that, without any such rigid injunction of a superior, a man should voluntarily expose himself to a probability of losing his life for others; provided he hath good hopes of thus procuring their safety, and that they are worthy of so dear a ransom: For it would be silly and senseless, that a man should venture his own life for another whom ‘tis impossible to preserve; and that a person of worth and excellence should sacrifice himself for the security of an insignificant paltry fellow. We conceive it then to be lawful, that a man may either give himself as a surety for another, especially for an innocent and worthy person, or as a hostage for the safety of many, in the case of treaties; upon pain of suffering death, if either the accused person does not appear, or the treaty be not observed. Though the other party to whom he stands bound on either of these accounts, cannot fairly put him to death upon such failure; as we shall elsewhere make out. But that those vain customs of men’s devoting themselves out of foolhardiness and ostentation (such as we observed to be in use amongst the Japanese), are contrary to the law of nature, we do not in the least doubt. For there can be no virtue in an action where there’s no reason. Nor do we pretend to maintain, that the law of nature obliges a man to prefer the lives of others to his own; especially supposing the cases and circumstances to be equal. For besides that the common inclination of mankind is an argument to the contrary, we might allege the testimony of witnesses beyond all exception, allowing a man to be always dearest to himself, and charity still to begin at home.

It remains that we examine, whether or no a man, at his own free pleasure, either when he grows weary of life, or on the account of avoiding some terrible impending evil, or some ignominious and certain death, may hasten his own fate, as a remedy to his present or to his future misfortunes. On this point we have a famous saying of Plato, in Phaedo, frequently mentioned with honour and commendation by Christian writers: … We are placed, as it were, upon the guard, in life; and a man must not rid himself of this charge or basely desert his post. Which Lactantius hath expressed more fully in his Divine Institutions; As, says he, we did not come into the world upon our own pleasure or choice, so neither must we quit our station otherwise than by the command of him who gave it us; who put us into this tenement of the body, with orders to dwell here, ‘til he should please to remove us. It is worth while to hear how Plato describes the self-murderer, whom he hath condemned to a disgraceful burial. He that kills himself, preventing by violence the stroke of fate, being forced to his end neither by the sentence of the judges, nor by any inevitable chance, nor on the account of defending his modesty in extreme danger; but thus unjustly condemning and executing himself, out of cowardice and unmanliness of spirit. Aristotle hath well seconded his master. To die, says he, either to get rid of poverty or of love or of any other trouble or hardship, is so far from being an act of courage, that it rather argues the meanest degree of fear. For ‘tis weakness to fly and to avoid those things which are hard and painful to be undergone. Grotius hath observed, that persons guilty of self-murder were excluded from decent honours of burial, both amongst the Gentiles and the Jews. But amongst the latter, one case is commonly excepted, and allowed as a just reason for killing one’s self; and that is when a man finds he shall otherwise be made a reproach to God, and to religion. For acknowledging the power over our lives not to be in our own hands, but in God’s, they took it for granted, that nothing but the will of God either manifest or presumptive, could excuse the design of anticipating our fate. As instances of this excepted case, they allege the examples of Sampson, who chose to die by his own strength, when he found the True Religion exposed to scorn in his person and misfortunes: and of Saul, who fell on his own sword, lest he should have been derided and insulted over by God’s and his enemies; and lest, if he should have yielded himself prisoner, the slavery of his country and kingdom should inevitably follow. For the Jews are of opinion, that Saul recovered his wisdom and honour, as to the last act of his life; in as much as after the ghost of Samuel had foretold his death in the battle, yet he refused not to engage for his country and for the law of his God; whence he merited eternal praise, even by the testimony ofDavid; who likewise commended so highly the piety of those men, who honoured their prince’s relics with a decent burial.

Some extend this exception and allowance to many other cases which bear a resemblance to the former. And the foundation they build upon is this, that as no man can be properly bound or obliged to himself, so no man can do an injury to himself, when he takes away his own life. As for a man’s being engaged by the Law of Nature to preserve himself, they say the reason of this is, because he is constituted and appointed by God for the maintenance of human society, which he must not by any means forsake, like an idle soldier, who runs away from the post assigned him in battle: And that therefore my obligation to save my own life, is not a debt to myself, but to God, and to the community of mankind. So that if that respect to God and to mankind be taken off and be removed, the care of my life is recommended to me only by sensitive instinct, which not rising to the force of a law, an action repugnant to it cannot be accounted sinful. On these considerations, they think the case of those persons deserves a favourable judgment, and at least a kind pity, rather than a rigorous censure, who lay violent hands upon themselves, when they see that they shall otherwise infallibly suffer a death of torture and ignominy from their enemies; since it cannot be for the interest of the public, that they must needs die in so infamous a manner: Or else, when they see such an injury likely to be offered to them, as if they undergo, they shall be ever after scorned and derided by the rest of mankind. Of the former sort are those who seeing themselves condemned to death, either by cruel enemies abroad, or bloody tyrants at home, have willfully prevented the stroke; either to avoid the tortures and the shame of a public execution, or to procure some benefit to their friends or families by this expedient. Thus Tacitus, giving an account of some of the accused persons under Tiberius, who made themselves away, observe, that the fear of the executioner rendered these acts very frequent. And that whereas such as suffered death in public, were denied the privilege of burial, and had their goods confiscated; those who died by their own hands were decently interred, and their last wills stood good with full effect; these indulgences serving as a reward for their haste. And here, by the way, we may remark, that Martial’s censure doth not always hold good,

‘Tis mad to die for fear of death;

For, as Aeschines hath well distinguished, To die is not so terrible, as to bear the infamy that attends some kinds of deaths.

The other sort of persons whose death we observed to be so favourably interpreted by some Casuists are those women and beautiful boys, who have killed themselves to avoid the violation of their chastity. And in their behalf, they urge this plausible excuse, that being assaulted with such a danger as they could not otherwise, unless by a miracle, escape, they might well conclude, that their Almighty Sovereign and General now gave them a dismission, and that they might well presume on the consent and leave of mankind, to whom they were already lost: it being no one’s interest that they should not anticipate their death for so little a time, to avoid the feeling of such tortures and abuses as might, perhaps, tempt them to yield to a more grievous sin: and in as much as it seemed unreasonable to condemn generous souls to such a necessity, as that they must wait for the sword of villains, who would enhance the bitterness of death, by their foul and ignominious usage.

But to leave this particular point without venturing at a determination; thus much we take to be evident, that those who voluntarily put an end to their own lives, either as tired out with the many troubles which commonly attend our mortal condition; or from an abhorrence of indignities and evils, which yet would not render them disgraceful members of human society; or through fear of such pains and torments as by resolutely enduring, they might have become useful examples to others; cannot be well cleared of the charge of sinning against the law of nature. Sir Thomas Moreseems to be of another opinion in his Utopia, but his reasons do not prevail with us to alter our judgment.

But those are, on all accounts, to be exempted from the crime of self-murder, who lay violent hands on themselves, under any disease robbing them of the use of reason. Many persons likewise who have run into voluntary destruction, upon an exceeding fright and consternation, have on that account been excused by moderate and candid judges.

It ought to be observed farther on this head, that it makes no difference whether a man kill himself, or force others to dispatch him. For he who at such a time, or on such occasion, ought not to die, is by no means excused, if he makes use of another man’s hands to procure his death; since what a man doth by another, he is supposed in law to have done himself, and must therefore bear the guilt or imputation of the fact. David was guilty of the death of Uriah, though he got it effected by the hands of the Ammonites. So were Pilate and Pharisees guilty of that of our Saviour, though they did not themselves fasten him to the cross, but ordered the soldiers to do it. Although the person who lends his hands to such a service, may likewise bring himself in for a share in the fault. For this reason we don’t admire the reflection which Florus makes on the deaths of Brutus and Cassius; Who, says he, doth not wonder, that these wise and great persons did not employ their own hands in their concluding strokes? Perhaps it was part of their persuasion, that they ought not to defile themselves by such attempts, but that in delivering their most holy and most pious souls from the confinement of their bodies, they should make use of their own judgment, in the intention, and of other men’s wickedness in execution. For if it were unlawful for them at that time to end their lives, it was indifferent whether they fell by their own, or by others’ violence. But if it were lawful, how can any wickedness or guilt be imputed to the servants who afflicted them? Though the historian might, in some measure, be excused, if the same custom were practised in his country, which Aeschines mentions amongst the Grecians, that if a person murdered himself, the hand that performed the deed was buried apart from the rest of the body.

To conclude, since we deny that a man hath absolute power over his own life, it is plain that we cannot approve of those laws, which in some countries either command or permit people to make themselves away. Such a law Diodorus Siculus reports to have been in force amongst the inhabitants of the island Ceylon, ordaining, “That the people should live only to such a number of years, which being run out, they eat a certain herb that put them into their long sleep, and dispatched them without the least sense of pain.” And thus too amongst the C[r]eans, all persons above sixty years old, were obliged by the laws to poison themselves, to supply food for the rest. Though Aelian gives this better reason for the practice; “that having arrived at such an age they were conscious to themselves, that they were no longer able to promote their country’s interest by their service; growing now towards stupidity and dotage.” Procopius relates a custom of the Heruli, by which those who were weakened and disabled, either by disease or age, voluntarily sent themselves out of the world: the wives hanging themselves at the tombs of their husbands, if they lost them in this manner…

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Filed under Europe, Pufendorf, Samuel von, Selections, Sin, The Early Modern Period

by Archive Librarian | · 5:20 pm

BARUCH SPINOZA
(1632-1677)

from Ethics

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, from a family that settled in Amsterdam to avoid religious persecution in Portugal. When Spinoza was six, his mother died; by the time he was in his early 20s, a sister and his father had also died. In his education, Spinoza studied Biblical and Talmudic texts and eventually mastered Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and German. Because of his questioning of traditional Jewish beliefs, in 1656, he was charged with atheism and was ostracized from his congregation, upon which he Christianized his name to Benedict. Four years later, Spinoza began work on the first book of his masterpiece, the Ethics, which was completed in 1675. During this time, Spinoza supported himself as a lens grinder, and it was glass dust, along with consumption, that killed him in 1677.

Along with Descartes and Leibniz, Spinoza was one of the most influential rationalists of the 17th century. In Ethics, he used a deductive method, much like Euclid’s, which inferred subsequent propositions from what he thought was a self-evident foundation of knowledge. The notations Definition, Demonstration, Scholia, Proposition, Corollary, and Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum, or “that which was to be shown”) in the selection printed here are references to elements of this deductive system; the internal references in the text are to other sections of the work. Spinoza’s system begins with God as the foundation of all reality and develops into a monist metaphysics in which God, substance, and nature are all interchangeable entities. To understand the nature of reality, man must go beyond sensual and scientific knowledge to an intuition of reality. Spinoza’s moral philosophy stressed that by coming to have true knowledge and love of God, man could know and experience freedom from the constraints of his own passions.

Spinoza believed that death was a severance of body and mind that does not necessarily involve physical death. Because his criteria of personal identity include memory, amnesia may count as death as much as becoming a corpse. For Spinoza, immortality is impersonal and the cause of death is external; therefore, suicide is an illogical act. Reason demands that every person should love himself, should desire what leads him to greater perfection, and should endeavor to preserve his own life; this seeking after self-preservation is the principal basis of virtue. As Spinoza says in his famous dictum, “A free man thinks of nothing less than death, and his wisdom is not a meditation upon death but upon life.”

Source

Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Prop. XVIII-XXII. Trans. R. H. M. Elwes, 1883. Available online from Project Gutenberg, text release #3800.

from ETHICS

PROP. XVIII. Desire arising from pleasure is, other conditions being equal, stronger than desire arising from pain.

Proof. Desire is the essence of a man (Def. of the Emotions, i.), that is, the endeavour whereby a man endeavours to persist in his own being. Wherefore desire arising from pleasure is, by the fact of pleasure being felt, increased or helped; on the contrary, desire arising from pain is, by the fact of pain being felt, diminished or hindered; hence the force of desire arising from pleasure must be defined by human power together with the power of an external cause, whereas desire arising from pain must be defined by human power only. Thus the former is the stronger of the two. Q.E.D.

Note. In these few remarks I have explained the causes of human infirmity and inconstancy, and shown why men do not abide by the precepts of reason. It now remains for me to show what course is marked out for us by reason, which of the emotions are in harmony with the rules of human reason, and which of them are contrary thereto. But, before I begin to prove my Propositions in detailed geometrical fashion, it is advisable to sketch them briefly in advance, so that everyone may more readily grasp my meaning.

As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands, that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him–I mean, that which is really useful to him, should desire everything which really brings man to greater perfection, and should, each for himself, endeavour as far as he can to preserve his own being. This is as necessarily true, as that a whole is greater than its part. (Cf. III. iv.)

Again, as virtue is nothing else but action in accordance with the laws of one’s own nature (IV. Def. viii.), and as no one endeavours to preserve his own being, except in accordance with the laws of his own nature, it follows, first, that the foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one’s own being, and that happiness consists in man’s power of preserving his own being; secondly, that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and that there is nothing more excellent or more useful to us, for the sake of which we should desire it; thirdly and lastly, that suicides are weak-minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. Further, it follows from Postulate iv., Part II., that we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to have no relations with things which are outside ourselves. Again, if we consider our mind, we see that our intellect would be more imperfect, if mind were alone, and could understand nothing besides itself. There are, then, many things outside ourselves, which are useful to us, and are, therefore, to be desired. Of such none can be discerned more excellent, than those which are in entire agreement with our nature. For if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are united, they form a combination twice as powerful as either of them singly.

Therefore, to man there is nothing more useful than man–nothing, I repeat, more excellent for preserving their being can be wished for by men, than that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body, and that all should, with one consent, as far as they are able, endeavour to preserve their being, and all with one consent seek what is useful to them all. Hence, men who are governed by reason–that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason, desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honourable in their conduct.

Such are the dictates of reason, which I purposed thus briefly to indicate, before beginning to prove them in greater detail. I have taken this course, in order, if possible, to gain the attention of those who believe, that the principle that every man is bound to seek what is useful for himself is the foundation of impiety, rather than of piety and virtue.

Therefore, after briefly showing that the contrary is the case, I go on to prove it by the same method, as that whereby I have hitherto proceeded.

PROP. XIX. Every man, by the laws of his nature, necessarily desires or shrinks from that which he deems to be good or bad.

Proof. The knowledge of good and evil is (IV. viii.) the emotion of pleasure or pain, in so far as we are conscious thereof; therefore, every man necessarily desires what he thinks good, and shrinks from what he thinks bad. Now this appetite is nothing else but man’s nature or essence (Cf. the Definition of Appetite, III. ix. note, and Def. of the Emotions, i.). Therefore, every man, solely by the laws of his nature, desires the one, and shrinks from the other, &c. Q.E.D.

PROP. XX. The more every man endeavours, and is able to seek what is useful to him–in other words, to preserve his own being–the more is he endowed with virtue; on the contrary, in proportion as a man neglects to seek what is useful to him, that is, to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power.

Proof. Virtue is human power, which is defined solely by man’s essence (IV. Def. viii.), that is, which is defined solely by the endeavour made by man to persist in his own being. Wherefore, the more a man endeavours, and is able to preserve his own being, the more is he endowed with virtue, and, consequently (III. iv. and vi.), in so far as a man neglects to preserve his own being, he is wanting in power. Q.E.D.

Note. No one, therefore, neglects seeking his own good, or preserving his own being, unless he be overcome by causes external and foreign to his nature. No one, I say, from the necessity of his own nature, or otherwise than under compulsion from external causes, shrinks from food, or kills himself: which latter may be done in a variety of ways. A man, for instance, kills himself under the compulsion of another man, who twists round his right hand, wherewith he happened to have taken up a sword, and forces him to turn the blade against his own heart; or, again, he may be compelled, like Seneca, by a tyrant’s command, to open his own veins–that is, to escape a greater evil by incurring, a lesser; or, lastly, latent external causes may so disorder his imagination, and so affect his body, that it may assume a nature contrary to its former one, and whereof the idea cannot exist in the mind (III. x.). But that a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing, as everyone will see for himself, after a little reflection.

PROP. XXI. No one can desire to be blessed, to act rightly, and to live rightly, without at the same time wishing to be, act, and to live–in other words, to actually exist.

Proof. The proof of this proposition, or rather the proposition itself, is self-evident, and is also plain from the definition of desire. For the desire of living, acting, &c., blessedly or rightly, is (Def. of the Emotions, i.) the essence of man–that is (III. vii.), the endeavour made by everyone to preserve his own being. Therefore, no one can desire, &c. Q.E.D.

PROP. XXII. No virtue can be conceived as prior to this endeavour to preserve one’s own being.

Proof. The effort for self-preservation is the essence of a thing (III. vii.); therefore, if any virtue could be conceived as prior thereto, the essence of a thing would have to be conceived as prior to itself, which is obviously absurd. Therefore no virtue, &c. Q.E.D.

Corollary. The effort for self-preservation is the first and only foundation of virtue. For prior to this principle nothing can be conceived, and without it no virtue can be conceived.

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by Archive Librarian | · 5:19 pm

THOMAS HOBBES
(1588-1679)

from Leviathan
from A Dialogue of the Common Laws of England

The British empiricist Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, Wiltshire, and, after being abandoned by his father, was raised by an affluent uncle. A precocious child, by the age of 14 he was translating a Greek tragedy into Latin verse. He attended Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and graduated in 1608. He tutored the future earls of Devonshire; this life-long contact with the family offered him exposure to influential people and the opportunity to travel. In 1628, Hobbes published his translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars, partly as a call to his countrymen to see the dangers of democracy. He was influenced by Euclid’s geometry while writing his first philosophical work, A Short Tract on First Principles, in which he employed the deductive method, in contrast to the popular inductive method of Francis Bacon and other experimental scientists. Knowledge of contemporary scientific thought and analysis pushed him away from the apparent vagaries of Aristotelianism and toward a new materialistic philosophy. Hobbes used geometry and the developing Galilean science of motion to describe man in society and his senses and imagination.

In 1640, because of his controversial views on the need for undivided sovereignty as expressed in his Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, Hobbes was forced for safety’s sake into exile in Paris, where he met Réné Descartes. Among his many activities there was service as a tutor to the Prince of Wales. Hobbes wrote on a great many topics, contributing to the fields of metaphysics and logic and laying the incipient foundations for Utilitarianism. In 1651, Hobbes published his masterpiece, Leviathan; or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. In 1666, the House of Commons investigated Leviathan for atheism and blasphemy, with the only result that Hobbes, having the king’s favor, was restricted in what he could publish in England. His materialistic philosophy and the concept of a social contract as the basis of society made him one of the most controversial English philosophers of his day. Hobbes lived to be 91; his later years were characterized by intellectual vigor and continuing controversy.

In Leviathan, Hobbes develops an egoistic psychology of man, describing the natural human condition as “a war of every man against every man.” Because men are by nature aggressive and violent, reason shows that it is prudent for them to enter into a social contract, giving absolute power to a sovereign who can guarantee to protect them from each other. This enables man to transcend the pre-societal condition of life that Hobbes famously describes as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and thus gives rise to a peaceful societal life in which social institutions and joint undertakings are possible. In the selection from Leviathan presented here, Hobbes outlines the tension between self-preservation and self-destruction. Although he does not explicitly mention suicide, he explains how the social contract involves the exchange of one’s rights over one’s own (and others’) life for the right of security.

In a brief passage in A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, Hobbes exposes a conundrum in the legal treatment of the person who is felo de se. In this dialogue, probably written between 1662 and the middle to late 1670s but not published until 1681, two years after the author’s death, Hobbes is exploring the tension between his own views that the “state of nature” (though the phrase does not occur in the Dialogue) is one of self-interested mutual hostility, tempered in the civil condition by the investment of sovereignty in the monarch, and the views of Sir Edward Coke, a noted defender of the authority of common law lawyers. Hobbes’s role in this dialogue—he speaks as the Philosopher—is to point out conceptual difficulties in the common law. Both under common law and under English statute, he points out, suicide is treated as a serious crime, but one of which it must be assumed, he argues on the basis of his egoistic psychology, that the perpetrator is not guilty by reason of insanity.

Sources

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, J. C. A. Gaskin, ed. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), part I, ch. XIV: Of the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts, pp. 86-89; Thomas Hobbes, A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, Joseph Cropsey, ed., (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), “Of Crimes Capital,” pp. 116-117.

from LEVIATHAN

OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURAL LAWS, AND OF CONTRACTS

The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgment, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.

By liberty, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external impediments: which impediments, may oft take away part of a man’s power to do what he would; but cannot hinder him from using the power left him, according as his judgment, and reason shall dictate to him.

A law of nature, (lex naturalis,) is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved. For though they that speak of this subject, use to confound jus, and lex, right and law; yet they ought to be distinguished; because right, consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbear: whereas law, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that law, and right, differ as much, as obligation, and liberty; which in one and the same matter are inconsistent.

And because the condition of man, (as hath been declared in the precedent chapter) is a condition of war of every one against every one; in which case every one is governed by his own reason; and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemies; it follweth, that in such a condition, every man has a right to every thing; even to one another’s body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, (how strong or wise so ever he be,) of living out the time, which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason, that every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule, containeth the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves.

From this fundamental law of nature, by which men are commanded to endeavour peace, is derived this second law; that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far-forth, as for peace, and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself. For as long as every man holdeth this right, of doing any thing he liketh; so long are all men in the condition of war. But if other men will not lay down their right, as well as he; then there is no reason for any one, to divest himself of his: for that were to expose himself to peace. This is that law of the Gospel; whatsoever you require that others should do to you, that do ye to them. And that law of all men, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.

To lay down a man’s right to any thing, is to divest himself of the liberty, of hindering another of the benefit of his own right to the same. For he that renounceth, or passeth away his right, giveth not to any other man a right which he had not before; because there is nothing to which every man had not right by nature: but only standeth out of his way, that he may enjoy his own original right, without hindrance from him; not without hindrance from another. So that the effect which redoundeth to one man, by another man’s defect of right, is but so much diminution of impediments to the use of his own right original.

Right is laid aside, either by simply renouncing it; or by transferring it to another. By simply renouncing; when he cares not to whom the benefit thereof redoundeth. By transfering; when he intendeth the benefit thereof to some certain person, or persons. And when a man hath in either manner abandoned, or granted away his right; then he is said to be obliged, or bound, not to hinder those, to whom such right is granted, or abandoned, from the benefit of it: and that he ought, and it is his duty, not to make void that voluntary act of his own: and that such hindrance is injustice, and injury, as being sine jure; the right being before renounced, or transferred. So that injury, or injustice, in the controversies of the world, is somewhat like to that, which in the disputations of scholars is called absurdity. For as it is there called an absurdity, to contradict what one maintained in the beginning: so in the world, it is called injustice, and injury, voluntarily done. The way by which a man either simply renounceth, or transferreth his right, is a declaration, or signification, by some voluntary and sufficient sign, or signs, that he doth so renounce, or transfer; or hath so renounced, or transferred the same, to him that accepteth it. And these signs are either words only, or actions only; or (as it happeneth most often) both words and actions. And the same are the bonds, by which men are bound, and obliged: bonds, that have their strength, not from their own nature, (for nothing is more easily broken than a man’s word,) but from fear of some evil consequence upon the rupture.

Whensoever a man transferreth his right, or renounceth it; it is either in consideration of some right reciprocally transferred to himself; or for some other good he hopeth for thereby. For it is a voluntary act: and of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. And therefore there be some rights, which no man can be understood by any words, or other signs, to have abandoned, or transferred. As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to aim thereby, at any good to himself. The same may be said of wounds, and chains, and imprisonment; both because there is no benefit consequent to such patience; as there is to the patience of suffering another to be wounded, or imprisoned: as also because a man cannot tell, when he seeth me proceed against him by violence, whether they intend his death or not. And lastly the motive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring of right is introduced, is nothing else but the security of a man’s person, in his life, and in the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a man by words, or other signs, seem to despoil himself of the end, for which those signs were intended; he is not to be understood as if he meant it, or that it was his will; but that he was ignorant of how such words and actions were to be interpreted.

from A DIALOGUE OF THE COMMONS LAWS OF ENGLAND

A Dialogue between Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England:

Of Crimes Capital

Lawyer. He is a Felon also that killeth himself voluntarily, and is called, not only by Common Lawyers, but also in divers Statute-Laws, Felo de se.

Philosopher. And ‘tis well so: For names imposed by Statutes are equivalent to Definitions; but I conceive not how any Man can bear Animum felleum, or so much Malice towards himself, as to hurt himself voluntarily, much less to kill himself; for naturally, and necessarily the Intention of every Man aimeth at somewhat, which is good to himself, and tendeth to his preservation: And therefore, methinks, if he kill himself, it is to be presumed that he is not compos mentis, but by some inward Torment or Apprehension of somewhat worse than Death, Distracted.

La. Nay, unless he be compos mentis he is not Felo de se (as Sir Edw. Coke saith, and therefore he cannot be Judged a Felo de se, unless it be first proved he was compos mentis.

Ph. How can that be proved of a Man dead; especially if it cannot be proved by any Witness, that a little before his death he spake as other Men used to do. This is a hard place; and before you take it for Common-Law it had need to be clear’d.

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Filed under Europe, Hobbes, Thomas, Mental Illness: depression, despair, insanity, delusion, Selections, The Early Modern Period

by Archive Librarian | · 5:18 pm

JOHN SYM
(1581c.-1638)

from Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing

John Sym, a zealous Calvinist minister born in Scotland and bred under its predestinarian theology, became rector of Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, where he remained until his death. He was much respected by his parishioners, though eventually hated by the government during its anti-Puritan periods. His treatise Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing (1637) was the first full-length work on suicide published in English; although John Donne had written Biathanatos [q.v.] nearly three decades earlier (1608), Donne’s work was not published until 1647, a decade after that of Sym.

Sym’s treatise is representative of the increasingly severe attitudes toward suicide developing from the 1530s and ‘40s to the time at which Sym was writing, a century later. Suicide was a felony at law, punished with increasing harshness beginning with the Tudors and Stuarts by forfeiture of property, burial restrictions, and body desecration, and with little mercy for suicide victims who were insane: non compos mentis verdicts were returned in less than two percent of suicide cases tried between the accession of Henry Tudor and the Restoration. There were other voices in the early 17th century: Montaigne’s A Custom of the Isle of Cea [q.v] had been translated into English in 1603, and the plays of Shakespeare [q.v.] had given some currency to Stoic and Epicurean ideas of suicide. Nevertheless, law, religion, and folk belief in England during this period remained adamantly opposed to suicide.

Sym was convinced that there was an epidemic of suicide in England at the time he was writing, and indeed the number of reported suicides had increased dramatically. His principal aim in Lifes Preservative is to show that deliberate self-destruction (including the very broad range of behavior he includes under this notion) is a heinous sin. In its full and direct form, suicide is a sin greater than murder—that is, self-destruction is a greater sin than the destruction of another person.

Sym’s conceptual analysis of self-killing distinguishes between direct and indirect self-murder, between self-murder by commission and by omission, and between spiritual and bodily self-murder. Thus, suicide as he understands it includes not only direct self-killing but parasuicidal behavior and risk-taking; it includes under the notion of suicidal behavior many forms of self-exposure and self-neglect: idolatry, perjury, self-starvation, lack of moderation in food or drink, unwarranted use of medicines or surgery, exposing oneself to lethal dangers due to inordinate desire for money and possessions, irrational risk-taking by soldiers on the battlefield or sailors at sea, dueling, keeping society with dangerous people, and breaking laws that have capital punishments. While Sym’s concept of suicide is extremely broad, he was actually prepared to be more tolerant in practice than many of his contemporaries, and he believed that it was possible to overcome suicidal despair. As one commentator writes, Sym’s work is “marbled with paradoxes.”

Source

John Sym, Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing, ed. Michael MacDonald. London and New York: Routledge, 1988 (facsimile of the original, 1637, spelling and punctuation modernized), from Chapter 7, 10, 11, pp. 53-57, 84-88, 90-95, 109-111; quotation in the introductory biography p. xliv.

from LIFES PRESERVATIVE AGAINST SELF-KILLING

OF MURDER, AS IT IS OF ONE’S SELF

Of the specific difference of self-murder

Besides the consideration of murder, in a man’s killing of himself, the third point in the general description of self-murder is the efficient cause, or means of it, and that is a man’s own self, by his own procurement, who is also the immediate object of that vile fact, whereof now I am to speak.

Here is now the specific difference of this sort of murder, whereby it transcends and is distinguished from all other murders, and consists in restraint of the act of killing, in regard of its individual object, to a man’s own life and self, which is the greatest and cruellestactof hostility in the world. When a man, who by nature is most bound to preserve himself, reflects upon himself to destroy himself, the horribleness whereof is so monstrous that we read no Law made against it, as if it were a thing not to be supposed possible. And this sin, of all others, is most against the Law of Nature, for that self-preservation arms a man to turn upon others unlawfully invading him to kill him. And also, it is against that self-love, which is the rule of our love to others and therefore what we may not lawfully, in this case, do to others, we can less lawfully do it to ourselves against this general law of love; in breaking whereof, specially towards ourselves, we violate the whole law, the general sum whereof is love.

Of the evil and greatness of self-murder.

This is the malice of Satan, and our own wretchedness, to set us at division and enmity against our selves, and in a monstrous manner to make a man both the active and passive subject of his own action, and utter destruction of himself, the greatest mischief that can betide him in this world, and so a man’s self becomes his own executioner, by his own hands or means, principal or accessary, by command, or otherwise.

If parricide be a grievous sin, as wilfully to kill our own parents, children, wives, husbands, etc. who are distinctpersons from ourselves, much more is self-murder abominable. For, by unity, things are preserved, and individuals are principally one, and therefore, if individuals be divided against themselves, the world cannot stand; when things shall cease to be true and amicably disposed to themselves.

Of lawful self-killing.

There is a lawful and commanded killing of ourselves. For understanding whereof, it is to be observed, that every one of us hath in him a self-old-man of sinfulness, lively and powerful in manifold lusts and wicked actions, of which the Apostle tells us (Romans 7:5) that when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the Law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death. When the commandment came, sin revived. The living whereof does kill us.

In this case, even for our own preservation, it is necessary, and lawful for us to kill our self-old-man, with the lusts thereof. As the Apostle commands usto mortify our members, that the body of sin might be destroyed, we should put off the old man (Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:9) so that we should become dead to trespasses and sins, wherein formerly we were dead.

This killing of our selves is metaphorical and moral, by which death we are made alive. For, if we do not thus die, we cannot live. As the sown corn must first die, before it can live and grow.

This our self-old -man is slain by three several acts or blows. First, the same after a sort, was crucified in Christ (Romans, 6:6), that the body of sin might be destroyed, although not the individual persons, but the common nature of mankind assumed by Christ did suffer death in him.

Secondly, our self-old-man is killed, by change of our state, upon our grafting into Christ by faith, so that we are, in that respect, said to be dead to the law, by the body of Christ (Romans 7:4-6) and that we are dead to the law, that we might live unto God (Galatians 2:19). This is done at one entire act or blow, in the act of our justification; so by this death, freeing us from him that hath the power of death, even the devil.

Thirdly, our self-old-man and the lusts thereof are killed, as touching the dominion and corruption of them, by the Spirit of God, in the act of sanctification. Touching which, the Apostle tells us (Romans 8:13) that if we, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, which is the work of our whole life, we shall live.

This killing of our self-old-man should be done by ourselves, being the executioners of it, by assistance of divine power from God, in three several acts.

First, by our act of savingly believing in Christ, whereby our state is changed from death to life.

Secondly, by our constant endeavors to be conformed to God’s image and will by daily renovation.

Thirdly, by our continual warfare against our corruption and temptations, touching which, the Apostle says, that the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Galatians, 5:17). They are so contrary the one to the other, that there is no living for either of them but by the death of its opposite. Neither is there any peace, until one of them be dead.

We should therefore ever use our Christian armor, and employ our utmost endeavors to destroy our self-old-man. Against which, if we do turn the edge of our spiritual sword to slaughter it, with the lusts thereof, we shall be diverted, not only from unjustly killing of others, but much more from killing ourselves, in any other respect. But when we, as Saul, do spare the life of this Agag, or self-old-man, it causes us, by a just hand of God, to fall upon ourselves, to take away that life of our own which we should both spare and cherish.

Diverse observations from the general consideration of self-murder.

From the consideration of self-murder we may observe: first, that man stands in more danger of destruction than any other creature. For, no creature is subject to attempts against the life of it, by itself, but only man, who is environed also with mortal dangers from without, but specially of his own procurement, by opening the way for others to invade and hurt him, by breaches and arms of his own making.

Secondly, we here see that God wants not means of execution of his judgements upon man. Seeing, he can leave a man to fall upon himself and be his own executioner.

The use hereof is to make us afraid to offend God, or to provoke him to be our enemy, or to live unreconciled with him, destitute of the assurance of his peace and favor.

Neither are we over-confidently to trust ourselves with our selves, of whom we have so little assurance for security and safety from self-mischief. And therefore, we are carefully to cleave to God for preservation, praying him not to give us up to ourselves, who are mercilessly cruel to ourselves, when we fall into our own hands. For the nearer that any are linked and knit together in condition, or affection, the more desperately opposite they are when they fall into division, because of the want of a fit medium or mediator of reconciliation, between a man’s self and himself. What mean is there, either to keep himself from himself, or to reconcile himself to himself, when himself is fallen out into murderous resolutions against himself?

Of the kinds of bodily self-murder.

Direct and indirect self-murder defined.
The kinds of bodily self-murder are two: Direct and Indirect. Self -murder is not such a general, as in the schools is called Genus univocum, so predicated of them both, as equally communicating itself to both those species, or species under it. But is genus analogum ab uno; or commune genus kath hen or pros hen, for that the same does properly and primarily belong to direct self-murder.

Direct bodily self-murder is the killing of a man’s body or natural life by himself, or his own means, advisedly, wittingly, and willingly, intending and effecting his own death.

Indirect self-murder of the body is when a man advisedly, wittingly, and willingly intends, and does that which he knows may be of itself, the means of the destruction of his natural life, although he does not purposely intend to kill himself thereby. Or it is the killing of a man’s own body, by unlawful, either moral or natural means of his own using, without intending of his death thereby.

Of the differences between direct and indirect self-murder. The proper differences between direct and indirect self- murderers consists specially in three things.

First, in the ends, directly and immediately intended by the self-murderers of both kinds, in their several acts. The end that is immediately intended in direct self-murder is death itself of their bodies that kill themselves; although not for itself, but in respect of some benefit conceited to be had thereby, which is their ultimate end, whereunto death is in the murderer’s intention subordinate, as for a man to kill himself, that he may be out of trouble.

The end that in indirect self-murder is immediately aimed at is the attainment of some good, real or apparent in, or by the means that an indirect self- murderer does use, without any respect or expectation of death thereupon ensuing; as in surfeiting by drunkenness or gluttony.

Secondly, they differ in the means that are used by them for accomplishing those ends. In direct self-murder, the means abused to that effect and end are not proper of themselves, nor by God’s appointment, but are perverted by him that kills himself thereby, as knives or the like. For God never appointed means for any man lawfully to use for effecting that which he would never have man do. A direct self-murderer uses not the means for any pleasure he hath in them, but for the consequent effects that he intends by them.

In indirect self-murder, the means and course used are such, as do properly kill in the end, if that they be persisted in, as drunkenness, and the like. Although they have in them a show of present good, which gives the users of them a kind of delight and contentment in them. Whereof they shall be disappointed, when, in the end, they shall, instead thereof, find death, which they least expected and most abhorred, and would resist the same, if it were inferred or offered to them by others.

Thirdly, direct and indirect self-murder do differ in the good that is aimed at by them, and in the time wherein they look to enjoy it. A direct self-murderer does fancy his good intended by him, in his act of self-murder, not to be in the means that he uses to kill himself but, in or by death, in his freedom from evil, or enjoying of good, the time of his reaping of which benefit he conceives to be, after that he is dead and gone.

An indirect self-murderer conceits the good that he aims at, by his course, to be and rest in the very means themselves that he uses, therein expecting the present enjoyment thereof before, and not after his death. The cogitations, and inflicting whereof he abhors, although he does prosecute with eager delight, the courses that do hasten and bring his death.

How indirect self-murder is greater, in some respects, than direct.

It is demanded, whether direct, or indirect self-murder be the greater sin? I answer, if we consider the freeness of the will, with less enforcement, and with more delight, prosecuting those deadly courses of indirect self-murder, there can be, in that respect, less said to excuse it than for direct self-murder. An indirect self-murderer is last (in respect of the mortal means he uses, and persists in, until the effect be accomplished,) as sure of death, which he abhors, as a direct self-murderer is of the same, that he desires, and endeavors for, and longs after.

Again, an indirect self-murderer is more hardly diverted from his unlawful, dangerous course, than, at first, a direct self-murderer, because this man may be sooner convinced of the vileness of his purposed fact. In excuse whereof he hath so little to say, and also the danger of it is more apparent and ghastful to the mind that advisedly in cold blood considers of it.

The other is taken up, with looking upon the present contentment in the means that he uses. Not considering death and danger, thereupon attending and ensuing, but self-deceives himself with excuses and colorable pretenses, and so does wink (as it were) that he may not see the blow of death that he is giving himself, with his own hands.

Of direct self-murder the cause or occasion is ordinarily from discontentment and sorrow, but, of indirect self-murder the cause commonly is pleasure and delight. Of these two motives, pleasure is the strongest, and their motion most violent and indivertable that are led by it because it moves with nature and not against it, and hath will in men more propense that way, which by grief is rather forced, than seconded.

How absolutely direct self-murder is the greatest.

Notwithstanding, Direct self-murder is the far more grievous sin, in three respects.

First, in respect of the direct intention of the will, and of its immediate object of murder of a man’s self, whereby it partakes, more properly and fully, of the nature of self-murder, than indirect self-murder does. For, what is under a common Genus, or general, directly partakes more of the nature of that Genus than that which is under it but by reduction, or indirectly. So then, although direct and indirect self-murder be both self-murder, yet they are not equal self-murder, but the former is the greater.

Secondly, for the consequences of the acts of them both, direct self-murder brings more certain and sudden inevitable destruction than indirect, which in this latter may be better prevented, by having time of repentance, than it can be in the former. And death in this is an accidental effect, besides the intention of the agent and nature of the means, which in the former is per se, and of the nature of the action so purposely ordered to that end.

Thirdly, direct self-murder hath more and greater sins complicated in it, than indirect hath, both by extension, in kinds and number against God, others, and ourselves, and also for intention, in degrees, by reason of circumstances of the party doing the same, against the light and reluctancy of nature, with direct intention to kill himself.

Of Indirect self-murder of the body.

Why Indirect self-murder is first treated of.
Although that by logical method I should treat first of Direct self-murder, because that which is directly under a Genus or general head should be handled before that which is but indirectly under it, for the nearness thereof unto the same, and for the light that it may afford, for the better understanding of the other. Yet, for all that, I will here begin with indirect self-murder for three causes.

First, because I will herein imitate nature, which proceeds from things less perfect, to things more perfect, because perfection is her ultimate end. Indirect self-murder is less perfect self-murder than direct self-murder because the Genus of self-murder agrees more properly, and primarily to direct self-murder, than to indirect.

Secondly, indirect self-murder is ordinarily, both the way and the cause of direct self-murder, and therefore, may be fitly treated of first. The rather because direct self-murder never goes before indirect; but this goes often before, and without that.

Thirdly, because my intention is to insist specially upon direct self-murder, and by means of it only do I speak of indirect self-murder. Therefore, I purpose first to dispatch it, as an accessory to the other; which I principally intend, as my last end in this treatise, therewithal to conclude the same.

Of Indirect self-murder by omission.
Having shown what indirect self-murder is, and how it is differenced from direct self-murder, I will now declare how men do fall into the same, which is done by two ways. First, by omission. Secondly, by commission.

By omission a man may indirectly murder himself, being the deficient cause of the preservation of his life, two ways: either in a physical natural manner, or in a moral meritorious course.

Of indirect self-murder, by omission physically wrought.
First, physically, and after a natural manner, a man may indirectly murder himself diverse ways as:

First, a man may indirectly murder himself, by way of omission, if out of sullenness, grief, or nigardize, or by indiscrete punishment of his body, he shall stubbornly and foolishly refuse to eat or drink, in that measure or kind that is requisite for his preservation, by abstinence, and sparing, either starving himself to death or breeding in himself and contracting that which kills him. Somewhat like hereunto was the practice of Ahab (1 Kings, 21:4) who, because Naboth would not let him have his vineyard, heavy and displeased, laid him down upon his bed and turned away his face, and would eat no bread. The contrary whereof Paul commanded Timothy.

Yet, to avoid this danger, men may not Gormandize, or excessively pamper themselves, indulgendo Genio, but may, and ought at set times to fast, both for civil and divine ends, with respect to the good both of soul and body.

Secondly, in this kind of omission, a man may indirectly murder himself by wilful contempt of the lawful use of physic or surgery, either to cure or prevent apparent mortal diseases or griefs or, when he will not be ordered, by the wholesome direction of the skillful in their calling; or, does not depend upon God for a blessing upon the means, who, by his over-ruling providence, directs the course and blesses the means.

Yet, men must herein be careful that they slavishly enthrall not themselves to the means, nor anxiously perplex themselves, if they cannot have them or that the success answers not their expectation. Because the Lord disposes things so, as he also may effect his work and will, often by crossing ours.

Thirdly, a man may incur indirect self-murder, by regardlessness of preserving himself against mortal dangers, from without himself as, in not seeking to God for reconciliation, by humiliation and repentance, in some imminent judgements that threaten from God our destruction, that we may be preserved either from them, or in them. Or as, when we are in danger of invasion by enemies, for a man then regardlessly to shut his eyes from foreseeing the same, that it may suddenly surprise him, or, that he should not prepare himself and do his utmost endeavors in his own defense, to save his life, if by resisting it may be done, or otherwise to provide for himself by flight or other prudent diversion, or preventing of the evil; that he may not carelessly suffer his life to be lost. So then, the cowardice of men in extremities by sea or land, that will not do their utmost endeavors for their own preservation, as likewise the griplenesse of those that to spare their goods, endanger the loss of their lives, for want of military furniture and means to make opposition, are much to be blamed for this course of indirect self-murder.

But yet, touching this point, men should be wary that they neither be so careful to preserve their lives that they should spare to venture them where they ought, and may comfortably spend and lay them down. Nor yet, have their eyes and confidence so upon earthly means, of human strength and provision, that they should forget or neglect to seek to God, and to depend upon him for safety and victorious success.

Fourthly, of indirect self-murder a man may be guilty by not avoiding and fleeing from persons and places destined to destruction, which are under a curse or in a course of mortal judgements, when we are not necessarily tied by duty or calling to commerce and be with them. As is apparent by Lot’s forsaking of Sodom, and by the command of Moses to the Israelites, to depart from the tents of Corah, Dathan and Abiram, and by that divine commandment, charging all the godly to come out of Babylon, that they might not be partakers of her sins and that they might not receive of her plagues.

And therefore, such as out of unwarrantable presumption, or carnal security, avoid not persons and places infected with the pestilence or subjected to perdition, when their presence is unnecessary and not to be justified, and pernicious to themselves. They must be cast upon the indictment of indirect self-murder, if by the aforesaid means, they do miscarry.

Of indirect self-murder by omission morally wrought.
By the way of deficiency, or omission of indirect self-murder, a man may be guilty by a moral meritorious default two ways:

First, by his willful neglect or contempt to live and walk in the ways of godliness and obedience to God’s affirmative commandments, whereunto the promises of life and protection are annexed, and which we may certainly expect, so long as we keep ourselves within compass of moral obedience to the Law and Gospel, and within the limits and precincts of our special callings; so that if therein, or therefore, we should lose our lives, we shall be free of the imputation of self-murder anyway, in that respect.

Secondly, in meritorious moral manner, a man may miscarry, and be indirectly guilty of his own death, by wilful omission and neglect of commending himself in constant and ordinary prayer to God, for divine preservation and safety of his life, against all evils and dangers, which may hurt him, and over which, and over him, God hath a sovereign power and command. And also, by his unbelief and not trusting in God in all estates, for preservation, under whole wings he may securely rest, a man may be justly deserted, and given over to perish and sink, as Peter when he doubted, was in danger of drowning.

This neglect of thus depending upon God arises either from self-confidence in man’s own power and means, whereupon he rests as secure, or else from Atheistical conceits of the providence of God, as if he were regardless of human affairs, and that all things did fall out by chance and fortune, because they do see all things in this world fall out alike to all men. Which being more exactly considered, manifests rather the free and sovereign powerful providence of God over-ruling all things.

Yet this divine preservation, by faith and prayer to God, excludes not, but includes the conscionable use of lawful means, and walking in appointed courses, without which we can expect safety no more than Paul and his company could, if they did let the mariners forsake the ship. If a man by the aforesaid neglect of prayer and dependence on God does not perish, it is God’s special work, reserving him either for repentance and amendment of his life or for some worse end and heavier judgement.

From this degree of indirect self-murder, by omission of means, we may observe that when God gives means of life, if we use them not to that end, we tempt God, to follow our own wills, while we will not follow his. And if we use the means, with trusting in them, then we make gods of the means, and therefore, in that respect, it is just with God to disappoint us of our expectation, and to condemn us of indirect self-murder, upon our miscarrying, in not using the means.

For, all means, as they are means, have relation to the end, why and whereunto they are appointed. And so, in their use to that end consists their perfection, without which they were useless and needless, and therefore, by the omission of the use of the means of life, which men would enjoy, they either tempt God to do things otherwise than he hath ordained, or else they do show themselves regardless of God, preferring their own wills above his, expecting to have their own purposes without him, whereby many men deceive themselves.

Of indirect self-murder by commission.
The second means of indirect self-murder is by a course of commission, or of doing things, unlawfully tending to bring a man to his death, which is a degree grosser than the former, and consists in diverse branches.

First, by abusing lawful things in transgressing due moderation in their use for time, measure and manner, falling into extremes either of defect or of excess, or of unreasonableness, which is done two ways. First, in things both respecting the body, and in the acts about them: as in eating to gluttony and drinking to drunkenness, using labor and recreations to surfeiting, and also in things respecting the mind, as in the over straining and surcharging of the thoughts, fancy, and understanding, in the immoderate distemperature of the affections and passions of the mind, suffocating or wasting the spirits by excess of choler, grief, fretfulness, and the like; which being let loose, and extended beyond the banks of their due moderation, do often prove mortal, and means of indirect self-murder, when they are willingly and indulgently entertained, and given way to. It is a hard thing for a man to use means, and not to abuse them, which causes many a man’s table to become a snare to him, and a trap, and shortens his time upon earth.

Secondly, indirectly, a man may be guilty of self- murder by needless mutilating of himself and cutting off any of his members (as Origen did), to the hurt and danger of his life, which by the preservation of such a member might have been in more safety, for life’s perfection is in the perfection of the whole body. Notwithstanding, for the safety of the whole, a man may lawfully and necessarily cut off a member; which cannot be preserved without manifest danger of thereby losing his life, but neither to punish a sin past, nor to prevent a sin to come, may a man cut off or destroy any of his members, whereby he may be less able to do the offices and duties for which God hath given him the same. Seeing that both for chastisement and prevention of sin, God hath appointed other moral means, which we are to use, and therein to depend upon God for the success. For not in man’s forced disability to act sin, but in the renovation of the heart consists true sanctification. That of pulling out the right eye, and of cutting off the right hand (Matthew, 5:29- 30) is meant of moral mortification, whereby those members are made useless and as if they were not, to any unlawful use.

Of Indirect self-murder of commission by unwarrantable practice of Physic, etc.
Thirdly, a man maybe guilty of indirect self-murder, by practicing of physic or surgery unskillfully, immoderately, or dangerously upon himself, either above his strength or knowledge, killing himself by his unwarrantable endeavors to cure himself, or else by leaving those that they know to be skillful, careful and have lawful calling to practice, to put themselves into their hands, whom they neither know to have skill nor calling to undertake such cures, or are such as be desperate attempters, with small regard of men’s lives in their practice. If a man know the same and does wilfully choose and commit himself, specially in difficult cases, into the hands of such, he can look for no good success, and must be self-guilty of the mortal effects thereupon following. But of this see more in the abuses of taking physic,

Of indirect self-murder by unthriftiness, etc.
Fourthly, this indirect self-murder is committed by willful unthriftiness and prodigality, whereby a man provides not, but misspends the means of his livelihood and so subjects himself and his to the peril of famine, contrary to the light of nature and scripture.

Yet we are herein to be wary that for prevention of want of livelihood, we fall not into covetousness and carking cares, or that we follow the world with neglect of better things, or that we should spare more than is fitting and shut up the bowels of compassion with the overthrow of liberality and works of charity and piety.

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Filed under Europe, Selections, Sin, Sym, John, The Early Modern Period

Category Archives: Europe

VOLTAIRE
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from Philosophical Dictionary

from Philosophical Dictionary

MONTESQUIEU
(1689-1755)

from The Persian Letters
from Consideration of the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline
from The Spirit of Laws

from THE PERSIAN LETTERS

from CONSIDERATION OF THE CAUSES OF THE GREATNESS OF THE ROMANS AND THEIR DECLINE

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ISAAC WATTS
(1674-1748)

from A Defense Against the Temptation to Self-Murder

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JOHN ADAMS
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from An Essay Concerning Self-Murther

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SAMUEL PEPYS
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from DIARY: JANUARY 21ST, 22ND, and 24TH, 1668

JOHN LOCKE
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from The Second Treatise of Government
Of the State of Nature
Of Slavery

from THE SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT

SAMUEL VON PUFENDORF
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from Of the Law of Nature and Nations

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BARUCH SPINOZA
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THOMAS HOBBES
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from Leviathan
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JOHN SYM
(1581c.-1638)

from Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing

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