Category Archives: Geographical Region

by | May 23, 2015 · 5:25 pm

NORTH AMERICAN INDIGENOUS CULTURES
(documented 1635-1970)

NORTHEAST

Ojibwa:

  1. Mrs. Cochran Becoming a Windigo
    (documented by Ruth Landes 1932-1935)

Micmac:

  1. The Gaspesians: Suicide, Shame, and Despair
    (documented by Le Clercq 1675-1686)

Huron:

  1. Le Jeune’s Relation
    (documented by Brébeuf, Le Jeune 1635-36)
  2. (and Iroquois) The Suicide of Children
    (reported by Wallace, citing LeMercier, 1600’s)

Iroquois:

  1. Suicide
    (documented by Lafitau 1712-17)
  2. Suicide of the Widowed
    (documented by de Lahontan, 1703)
  3. The Song of Death
    (documented by de Lahontan, 1703)
  4. Murder and Suicide
    (account by  Mrs. Mary Jemison, 1817)

Seneca:

  1. The Code of Handsome Lake
    (recited by Edward Cornplanter to Arthur C. Parker, 1850, 1913)
  2. The Suicide as Earthbound
    (account by Cornplanter, Jr.)

SOUTHEAST

Cherokee:

  1. Varieties of Shame: Time of Death, Pollution, and the Disfigurement of Smallpox
    (documented by James Adair, 1775)

Natchez:

  1. The Favorite Wife of the Chief Sun
    (documented by Jean-Bernard Bossu, 1751-1762)

GREAT PLAINS

Comanche:

  1. Elderly Persons are “Thrown Away”
    (documented by Ernest Wallace & Edward Adamson Hoebel, 1933, 1945)
  2. Suicide from Overwhelming Shame
    (documented by Hoebel, 1940)

Arapaho:

  1. The Rarity of Suicide; When the Camp Moved
    (documented by Hilger, 1935-1942)

Sioux:

  1. Suicide among Sioux Women
    (documented by John Bradbury 1809-11)

Cheyenne:

  1. Two Twists in Battle
    (documented by Llewellyn and Hoebel, 1941)

Mandan:

  1. Smallpox and the End of a Household
    (documented by Bowers 1930-1931)

Crow:

  1. Crazy-Dog Wishing to Die
    (documented by Lowie, 1913)
  2. The Lowest of the Low
    (documented by Wildschut, 1918-1927; 1960)

Gros Ventre:

  1. Singing the ‘Brave-Song’
    documented  by Flannery 1940-48

Blackfoot:

  1. Suicide to Avoid Marriage
    (documented by G. B. Grinnell, c. 1888)
  2. The Sandhills
    (account by Adolf Hungry Wolf, 1977)
    20b Kit-sta-ka Rejoins her Husband After the Sun Dance
    (documented by McClintock, 1910)
  3. When Wakes-Up-Last Murdered All of his Children
    (documented by McClintock, 1968)

SOUTHWEST AND THE GREAT BASIN

Navajo:

  1. Notes on Navajo Suicide
    (documented by Wyman and Thorne)
  2. The Destination of Witches and Suicides
    (documented by Wyman, Hill, and Osanai, 1942)
  3. Reasons for Suicide
    (documented by Leighton and Kluckhohn,  1947)
  4. Ending One’s Life by Wishing to Die
    (documented by Newcomb, 1915-1940)
  5. Crazy Violence
    (documented by Kaplan and Johnson, 1964)
  6. Navajo Suicide
    (Jerrold Levy, 1965)

Hopi:

  1. Making Arrangements for Suicide
    (account by Nequatewa, 1936)
  2. How the Hopi Marked the Boundary Line
    (account by Nequatewa, 1936)
  3. Girls Going Qövisti
    (documented  by Titiev,  1932-1940)

Ute:

  1. Postmenopausal Women
    (documented by Powell, 1867-1880)

Pueblo:

  1. Suicides as Cloudbeings
    (documented by Parsons, 1939)
  2. Ritual Revenge
    (documented by Ruth Benedict, 1934)

Jicarilla Apache:

  1. Apache War Customs
    (documented by Opler,  1936)

Mojave:

  1. The First Death: Matavilye, and Suicide in Childbirth, Weaning, and Twins
    (documented by Devereux,  1961)

WEST AND NORTHWEST COAST

Pomo:

  1. Psychological Suicide
    (documented by Aginsky, 1934-35)

Wintu and others:

  1. Suicide in Northeastern California
    (documented by Voegelin, 1937)

Klamath:

  1. The Stigma of Suicide
    (documented by Thompson, 1916)

Salish:

  1. Strained Sex Relations
    (documented by Ray, 1928-1930)
  2. Suicide by Hanging
    (documented by Cline, 1930)

Kwakiutl:

  1. Shame
    (documented by Ruth Benedict, 1934)

Chilkoti/Talkotin:

  1. Barbarities Practised  on Widows
    (documented by Ross Cox, attributed to M’Gillivray)

Tlingit:

  1. Holding Others Responsible for Suicide
    (documented by Krause 1881-1882; 1956)
  2. Slaves: An Honor to Die at the Master’s Funeral
    (documented by Niblack, 1887)
  3. Paying Damages for Suicide
    (documented by  Jones 1893-1914; 1914)

Kaska:

  1. Suicide and Intoxication
    (documented by Honigmann, 1943-1945)

In the 15th and 16th centuries—prior to contact with Europeans—it is estimated that there were perhaps 70 million people inhabiting the western hemisphere, perhaps one-fifth of the global population at the time. Native Americans are understood to have crossed a land-bridge connecting North America with Asia beginning roughly 13,000 years ago, probably in at least three migrations involving land travel or small boats hugging the coastline. Some evidence from gene-frequency distributions and DNA clocks in contemporary indigenous populations suggests that the earliest migrations may have occurred even earlier. There are archaeological claims of finds as early as 33,000 b.c.; evidence remains speculative. As North America was populated, the new inhabitants adapted to local environments and developed a large variety of cultural patterns; some groups remained in the Arctic and northern regions; others continued southward through Central America and on into South America. Only about a tenth of the population of the western hemisphere at its height, just before contact with Europeans, lived in North America; greater population density occurred closer to the equator.

As with indigenous peoples in other areas of the world, nomenclature for the original settlers of a region varies. North American native peoples are usually categorized by similar geographic location and related sociocultural practices. Europeans originally called the inhabitants of North America “Indians,” reflecting Columbus’s error in thinking he had reached the Far East. North American indigenous peoples are also referred to as First Nations, First Peoples, Amerindians, and Native Americans. Distinct groups traditionally called “tribes” (as they are in many of the selections provided here) are now often referred to as “nations,” reflecting both their traditional culture and current legal status. Regional groupings of Native Americans, associated (though in somewhat varied ways) by language groups, cultural patterns, and DNA linkages, include the peoples of the Eastern Woodlands (both North and South), the Plains, the Southwest and the Great Basin, and California and the Northwest Coast, to name the areas from which selections are included here. Although this is not customary in some scholarly fields, the selections in this volume follow an east-to-west pattern because of the rough chronology of widespread European contact. The selections preserve the nomenclature for groups and locations used in the originals in each case. Arctic, Mesoamerican, and Caribbean peoples are treated in other sections of this volume.

Although Native American groups did not keep written records, access to many oral traditions and ceremonies has been preserved by two principal means. First, ethnographic accounts, primarily of the groups of eastern North America and, to a lesser degree, the Plains, come from early explorers and missionaries sent to convert the Indians; however, as Lyle Campbell puts it, these reports were often “armchair nonsense.” There were some good accounts of many of the Iroquoian groups, particularly by Lewis Henry Morgan, from the 1870s onward, but the rise of scientific ethnography is usually attributed to the influential work of Franz Boas (1858–1942) and his many students. After that time, ethnographers attempted to document the beliefs and customs of the more removed tribes by getting an insider’s view of social norms and rules; they tried to shun descriptions in terms of outside comparisons, judgments, or assumptions, though one may question to what degree they, as outsiders, succeeded. Second, in recent decades work by various by 20th-century Native Americans recounts the “old ways,” usually by interviewing the eldest members of their tribes; here, information about traditional views and practices comes from an insider’s point of view, but it is of substantially later date.

For both kinds of source, the problem of cultural overlay subsequent to European contact is considerable. The early explorers, missionaries, and ethnographers came into contact with peoples uninfluenced by European thought, but their reports were often heavily biased by their own religious and political convictions—as is particularly evident, for example, in patronizing remarks like Lafitau’s comment that “[t]‌he Indians are enlightened enough to distinguish good from evil” (see selection #5), where he is reporting a response he believes coincides with Western views of suicide from Virgil on. Informants were also often selective in what they were willing to tell outsiders. On the other hand, contemporary Native American insiders’ reports of the “old-ways” may be more sensitive to the nuances of traditional thinking, but the groups themselves have been in contact with European and other thought for as many as three or four hundred years, and these societies have in any case been fully disrupted from the time of contact on by disease and severe population reduction, wars, slaving (in diverse areas), the acquisition of the horse, and other factors. Insiders gave accounts of the “old ways” that were also sometimes tailored to fit agendas—sometimes to claim rights to land by modifying historical traditions, sometimes to make missionaries think their beliefs were more similar to Christianity than they in fact were, sometimes to gain whites’ technology to give them an advantage in disputes with hostile tribes, and so on. Then, too, accounts from either sort of source may draw on interpretations or misinterpretations of individual behavior, as in Landes’s account of an Ojibwa woman who felt she was becoming a windigo (selection #1)—whether explained as a psychosis brought on by chronic food shortage or the product of hostile accusations—that nevertheless reveal something about traditional Native American beliefs about suicide: in this case, that she had “an undisputed right to dispose of herself as she chose.”

A survey of the full range of Native American beliefs about suicide, as closely as they can be approximated, reveals a number of contrasts and connections. For example, many groups drew a moral distinction between voluntary, self-initiated death in battle and voluntary, self-initiated death in other contexts. Charging wildly into the ranks of the enemy with the intent to die, for example, was seen as an act of honor and courage, while hanging oneself from a tree was condemned. Yet even when suicide was condemned, the degree of disapproval was often comparatively light. In contrast with European religion, which at the time of contact almost uniformly saw suicide as gravely sinful and punished by an afterlife in hell, several Native American traditions held that the “punishment” comes from the ghosts of other deceased people who themselves banish the suicide out of fear. Several tribes, including the Natchez, seem to have engaged in a practice analogous to the East Indian sati, and in some groups “widow-burning” was expected of both females and males; in other groups, attempts at self-immolation appear to have been socially expected but also routinely thwarted by other members of the tribe. On the other hand, various ethnologists, anthropologists, and other observers explicitly report few or no cases of suicide in many groups, including the Maricopa, the Tubatulabal, the Bella Coola, the Ojibwa, the Hare, the Montagnais, the Lee Islanders, the Arapaho, the Dhegiha, some of the Pomo, the Plateau Yumans, the Southern Paiute, and the Zuni (selections from some of these groups are presented here). For the most part, contemporary outsiders’ stereotypes of suicide-related practices among Native Americans have been confined to that custom in which migratory groups abandon elderly or infirm members by the side of the trail (not actually evident in most groups), but in fact the full range of Native American beliefs and practices about suicide is far more complex. After all, there were as many as 500 tribes in continental North and Central America, about the same number in Mesoamerica and lower Central America, and some 1,500 in South America at the time of contact, each with differences from the others.

The accounts presented here span some 300 years and are arranged in geographic rather than chronological order. Some date from the immediate post-contact period; some are quite recent, drawn from the comparatively insulated environment of the reservations set up by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which isolated Native American peoples in the United States. As with all oral cultures evolving in part in response to outside contact, it is not possible to determine with certainty the exact nature of pre-contact, historical views of suicide as yet uninfluenced by outside forces, and the reliability of later observers is always in question; yet even given these difficulties, the overall picture they present of the ethics of suicide as seen by these cultures is compellingly different from those of Western observers.

The Selections

Northeast

The indigenous groups of what is now eastern Canada and the United States inhabited woodland territory, and the groups are thus often referred to as Eastern Woodlands Indians. Although central New York State is often considered the home of the Iroquoian groups, some 12 Iroquoian languages were spoken from the St. Lawrence River to the South Carolina-Georgia border. This language family (which included the Huron and the Cherokee) also refers to the Five (and eventually Six) Nations—the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Seneca, and Onondaga, followed later by the Tuscarora—that formed a loose confederacy known as the League of the Iroquois. Selections #1 and #2 provide comparatively recent accounts of suicidal behavior in this region.

Jesuit missionaries began visiting the Hurons around 1610; their correspondence gives us the earliest account of Native American beliefs concerning suicide. The letters of the Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf to his superior Father Paul le Jeune (1635, 1636), compiled together with reports from other missionaries in a form now known as Le Jeune’s Relation [selection #3], depict the afterlife as is it understood by the Hurons, noting that suicides (like those who have died in war, but unlike thieves) are relegated to different villages in the afterlife than other souls, and are feared and ostracized, but also that death might be sought in certain circumstances. (Brébeuf himself, a French Catholic captured by the enemy Iroquois, went fearlessly to his death, martyred at the stake.) Wallace’s early account (selection #4, quoting LeMercier, a Huron of the 1600s) describing Seneca life and the matter of suicide in children, suggests that either it is the product of great impulsivity or that it is a trivial action. Lafitau’s account (selection #5, 1712–17; 1724) observes that although those who committed suicide are denied communication with other souls of the dead, the Iroquois committed suicide for even the smallest reproach. Concerning widows, Lahontan observes (selection #6, 1692–1703) that they were often driven to suicide by lack of an appropriate partner, and (in selection #7) that widows who dreamt of their departed loved ones twice in the six months following the death were permitted to commit suicide in order to be reunited with the deceased spouse. Although the Iroquois were said to often commit suicide to avoid suffering and captivity, Lahontan also narrates with evident astonishment a case in which a prisoner tortured severely under the auspices of the French nevertheless “ran to his death with a greater unconcernedness, than Socrates would have done” (selection #7). In selection #8, also describing attitudes that may have been similarly inconsistent, Mary Jemison, who lived with the Iroquois around the time of Handsome Lake, reports that Jack and Doctor, two Squawky Hill Indians who had killed her son, contemplated the terrors in the afterlife for those who commit suicide, yet one of them decided to poison himself regardless of the consequences.

The Seneca prophet Ganioda’yo, or Handsome Lake, who revitalized the Iroquois after their defeat in the American Revolution, reinforces traditional beliefs with Christian theological ideas. Selection #9, from Handsome Lake’s Code or “Great Message” (the Gaiwiiye), was recited from memory by Handsome Lake’s half-brother Gaiant’wake (Edward Cornplanter, one of six authorized “holders” of teachings of Handsome Lake’s religion) after an original version from about 1850 was lost; it was translated in 1913 for Arthur C. Parker by William Bluesky. The passage explores the notion of the afterlife, alluding to a belief found in other Native American groups, especially the Mojave, that infants before, at, and just after birth are capable of making choices about whether to enter into or continue in life. Some choose not to do so: deaths among infants are deliberate. This passage also alludes to the concept of allotted life; for “the number of our days is known in the spirit world.” In selection #10, Edward Cornplanter’s son Jesse Cornplanter explores this concept in relation to suicide: going against the fate of one’s allotment of life displeases the Great Spirit and dooms one to wander the unpleasant reaches of the afterlife; the notion of “sin” employed in this text is an example of Handsome Lake’s importation of Christian theological ideas.

Southeast

Native Americans, who had no immunity to diseases brought by Europeans, succumbed in enormous numbers to measles, typhus, plague, influenza, malaria, yellow fever, and especially smallpox, a disease of extremely high mortality that also produced scarring and blindness in those it did not kill outright. Selection #11 describes shame-associated suicides among the Cherokee, including those that occurred during the smallpox epidemic of 1738–39. James Adair’s account focuses not only on the forms of shame associated with ritual pollution and disfigured personal appearance, but the perceived failures of divine powers among the religious leaders, who were unable to stop the epidemic. An account from the Plains Mandan (see selection #18) also describes the social consequences of smallpox.

According to an early observer, the Natchez, a people inhabiting the resource-abundant  area surrounding the lower Mississippi River who had a very complex, stratified social structure and an advanced civilization with state-level organization, appear to have practiced a form of sati: after an individual who belonged to the ruling clan passed away, the widow or widower and other chosen family members and retainers would allow themselves to be strangled in a public ritual. The custom applied to both females and males. Jean-Bernard Bossu’s Travels (selection #12, 1751–62, 1771) tells of several potential suicides associated with this custom. First there is the youth Etteacteal, who had married into the blood of the ruling Suns but, now that he is expected to submit to strangulation upon the death of his wife, attempts to avoid it. Then there is the favorite wife of Bitten Snake, the great war chief of the Natchez, who faces death with equanimity. And finally, there is the Chief Sun, who is restrained from suicide by the French. Nevertheless, institutionally expected consent to being killed, cooperation in being killed, or undertaking of suicide upon the death of one’s spouse is far less frequent in North American native cultures than in those of South America, Africa, India, or Pacific Island cultures, perhaps in part explained by the fact that small-scale hunter-gatherer groups with precarious survival situations, as many indigenous American groups were (though not the Natchez), could less well afford the loss of tribe members.

The Plains

Moving roughly east to west and south to north among the Native American cultures of the Plains, several divergent concepts of suicide emerge. Self-senicide, or self-killing by the elderly, is reported among the Comanche (selection #13). Among the Arapaho, suicide is said to be rare, although traditional accounts are reported here of elderly people asking to be left behind when the camp of this migratory group moves on. John Bradbury, an early American traveler, reports (in selection #16, 1809–11) that the Sioux saw killing oneself as an affront to the “Father of Life,” and those who took their own lives were destined to carry around the lethal instrument in the afterlife as punishment. For this reason, it was said that women who hanged themselves to evade maltreatment hanged themselves on the smallest tree that would support their weight, and in general those who committed suicide chose means of doing so that would involve the least burdensome load to carry into the next life.

Furthermore, while taking one’s own life was frowned upon and discouraged by certain beliefs about the afterlife, in some Plains Indian groups like the Cheyenne and Crow, giving oneself up to die in battle was seen as an act of courage and self-sacrifice, both honorable and socially approved, quite different from the self-inflicted type of suicide that was strongly denounced.

To increase honor, a Plains brave might seek a glorious death in battle. Unlike the negative aura surrounding grievance suicides, death-in-battle suicides were held up as examples of courage and sacrifice. Hoebel’s account of the Cheyenne warrior Two Twists (selection #17) suggests that the act of seeking death in battle could be sufficient to secure honor, and did not require the actual death of the individual. Two Twists’ wild charge into battle was enough to earn him great respect; it also compensated for Red Robe’s grief in losing his sons at the hands of the enemy. However, if the person proclaiming a wish to die did not act with suicidal intensity in battle—and hence at a real risk of death—prestige was lost and ridicule followed.

This ideal of a glorious death in battle was even more fully developed among the Crow (selection #19) and also occurred among the Gros Ventre (selection #21). Lowie reports in 1913 that among the Crow, an individual who became weary of life would announce that he was to become a “Crazy Dog.” From that point forward, the “Crazy-Dog-Wishing-To-Die” would say the opposite of whatever he meant (i.e., “talk crosswise”) and would seek death at the first opportunity. One possible connection between the phenomenon of “talking crosswise,” announcing the death wish, and suicidal behavior is the conjecture that, under normal circumstances, human beings do not seek or wish for death; in similar fashion, our communications do not normally signify the opposite of what is transmitted. In cross talk, communication is reversed and, analogously, death is sought instead of life. If a Crow who announced himself as committed to the life of a Crazy-Dog-Wishing-To-Die did not seek death, he became a laughing stock; he did not serve the tribe instrumentally by being courageous in battle and remained untrue to his word. Comanche informant reports collected by Hoebel (1940) (selection #13), reporting similar practices, also suggest that the threat of suicide was a means of social control. A suicide threat was used to call attention to a perceived wrong; the threat also served to call down societal rebuke upon those who had wronged the individual making the suicidal threat. Indeed, social responsibility for suicide was often assigned to a second party, and causing a suicide was essentially seen as homicide. The “cleansing of the arrows” ceremony was performed after either suicide or homicide to alleviate the bad luck brought on by such actions. Suicide was a way of recovering lost prestige or increasing it.

Wildschut’s 1918–27 fieldwork among the Crow (selection #20), in contrast, presents quite a different picture, in which suicides (and murderers) were regarded as the lowest of the low.

Among the Blackfeet, according to Grinnell (selection #22), suicide was quite common among girls facing marriage, for whom no choice was permitted. The same was true for individuals unlucky enough to be showing the early signs of fatal disease. Suicide also had a strong familial element. Adolf Hungry Wolf, recounting the “old-ways” of the Blackfoot Nation (selection #23), intimates that a dead person’s spirit might try to convince the living to accompany them into the sand hills, the place of the dead. In a related selection (#24), Kit-sta-ka jumps to her death after the Sun Dance in order to join her husband in the spirit world. Selection #25 records a problem in contact between Native Americans and whites: suicide following murder, associated with alcohol, based on an incident in October 1903.

Southwest

Some Navajo researchers have posited a strong relationship between certain religious customs and conceptions of suicide. Father Berard Haile’s account (1942) of the Navajo “Upward Reaching Way” ceremony describes the myth on which it is based. The First Woman, who had originally led people out of the underworld, had died from a hemorrhage. First Woman’s husband decides to follow her spirit into death, that is, he chooses to forgo life and join his wife in the Emergence place, where spirits of the dead congregate. The journey to the Emergence place is voluntary, and Haile reports that at least one informant saw this as accounting for later suicides.

Among the Navajo, suicide was frowned upon, but not strongly condemned. Anthropologists Wyman and Thorne (selection #26) argue that the reason it was deemed undesirable was because of the negative effect it had upon family members and others who depended on the deceased. As with the Sioux, those who have committed suicide must carry the lethal instrument with them in the afterlife. Although suicides arrive at the same destination in the afterlife as everyone else, they are excluded from the sociality that exists there; other spirits fear and ostracize them. This echoes the earlier accounts from the Iroquois: It is not so much a judgmental deity who imposes eternal punishment on the suicide; rather, it is an isolation imposed by a fearful post-mortem society. Jerrold Levy adds (in selection #31) that suicide was not strongly condemned because of a deterministic element in the Navajo worldview: The Navajo is not wholly acting through individual will; rather, suicide is something that happens to a person and is not freely chosen.

As with all the indigenous cultures described here and in other parts of this volume, the identification of practices as “suicide” is itself subject to bias. Like most languages, Navajo has no true term for “suicide”; the closest term is a verb meaning to kill oneself, but there is no nominal expression to describe this behavior as a type or category of act. (Indeed, English had no such term until Walter Charleton pioneered the Latinate construction, sui- “self” \+ –cide, “kill,” in 1651.)

There is great importance attached to harmony with the natural and supernatural worlds in Navajo beliefs. Illness and other problems in life were thought to be due to a corruption in this harmony. Traditional ceremonies, sometimes lasting days, were thought to rebuild this harmony and restore order to the world and the individual. Coming into contact with a corpse and its attending spirit would serve as one type of disruption; for this reason, the Navajo feared the dead and often were loath to touch a corpse. Thus, the common notion of “suicide as revenge” can be intensified under Navajo religious belief: a well-placed suicide can be an instrument—a weapon—that harms others. Since the Navajo fear contact with a corpse, an individual with a vendetta against another will commit suicide in a place where the hated person will encounter the corpse, and this action will bring bad luck upon the targeted individual.

In 1967, the Hopi storyteller Nequatewa—an insider in the tradition handing down accounts of the “old-ways” and carrying on the tradition of passing down tribal culture by word of mouth from adult males to boys at early maturity—recounted a traditional tale of the Hopi variant of a warrior seeking death in battle. According to this tale, the Hopi arranged battles in which they knew they would die; as part of this custom, the warrior seeking death would wear jewelry that was to be collected as payment by the slayers. The Hopi legend describing the creation of the boundary with the Navajo portrays an arranged death of this sort (selection #33; see also #32). As in the reports of other deaths of this type, it is unclear whether the claim is accurate—Elsie Parsons, for instance, derides this account as an idea of a suicide pact that Nequatewa “worked into a true story” and quotes Ruth Bunzel as claiming that the very idea of suicide is “so remote from [Hopi] habits of thought that it arouses only laughter” (see note in selection #36). It is also unclear whether, even if the practice were true, the Hopi would equate it with other more direct forms of suicide.

While suicide as a revenge strategy was not unknown among the Pueblo, Ruth Benedict observes that not only was suicide outlawed among the Pueblo, but the very concept evoked incredulity and laughter (selection #37). If these were genuinely indigenous attitudes rather than specimens of overlay from European contact, it is somewhat surprising when Parsons observes (in selection #36) that some Pueblo did not believe in any afterlife punishment of suicides; instead, after death, suicides were thought to join believers, good men, and those who “perish in the mountains” (possibly meaning warriors), and would become Lightnings or Cloud Beings.

The explorer John Wesley Powell also reports a variant of self-senicide among the Utes, which he said “made a deep impression upon my mind.” (selection #35) The Utes, he says, believe that a woman who lives much beyond menopause will turn into a witch, and that it is better to die than meet such a fate. Many such women commit suicide by voluntary starvation, and he describes three old women in the process of doing so. Notes by the editor of his text indicate that Powell may not have actually seen these women but was recording a tale or myth about them; nevertheless, his portrayal of them and their final, shuffling dancing is extremely vivid.

Seemingly voluntary death in battle, much as in the Cheyenne, Crow, and Hopi, was also reported among the Jicarilla Apache (selection #38), now residents of northern New Mexico. Here too the warrior is said to divest himself of all ordinary conventions and enter battle with the intent of receiving a fatal wound. Among the Apache, the reversal of the normal order of things, analogous to the Crows’ “talking crosswise,” is demonstrated by stripping completely naked.

While some Native American groups would constrict their conceptions of suicide (if indeed they had such a concept at all) to exclude voluntary death in battle, the Mojave expanded their conception to include that and more. Devereux, in a long essay in ethnopsychiatry shaped by his own commitment to Freudianism, reports (in selection #39) that the Mojave, urged on by certain religious practices, expanded the rubric of suicide to include stillborn births, the deaths of suckling infants, the deaths of one or both twins, the symbolic death of one who sacrifices an animal upon commencing an incestuous marriage, funeral suicide, certain deaths surrounding witches, and finally, “real suicides”—those suicides that are akin to our modern notions. Drawing on the views of Freud [q.v.], Devereux sees many of these notions as connected to the mythic first death of Matavilye—a death that was willed and actualized by the deity himself.

The Mojave believed that infants were rational, sentient beings. In the continuation of selection #39, Devereux reports the view that some infants decided not to be born and assumed a transverse position at delivery—the buttocks-first exit that often killed both baby and mother. The infant who did this was assumed to be a shaman. Shamans, as a whole, did not wish to have life, and often decided to kill themselves and their mothers at birth. Those infants who survived a transverse birth were expected, and commonly grew up to be, the shamans of their tribes. Many shamans practiced obstetrics, and were often called on to help coax a dangerously positioned baby to accept life and avoid suicide. The Mojave disapproved of those babies who committed suicide in this way; it was viewed as a selfish act. Ordinary infants who died early in life were said to proceed to a “rathole” in the next life. Furthermore, since infants were seen as capable of making choices, the Mojave believed that the death of a recently weaned child was also a voluntary death. Young children who were replaced at the breast by younger siblings were often thought to kill themselves from jealousy. Jealousy was particularly acute among twins, who were commonly thought to be gods. When these infant gods grew to dislike their families, became tired of life, or became jealous of each other or younger siblings, they were thought to kill themselves in order to return to their heavenly abode. This type of suicide was more strongly condemned than the first.

Devereux also claims that the Mojave practiced symbolic suicide at the occurrence of an incestuous marriage. A horse, symbolizing the bridegroom, was killed; this dissolved the extant family connections and created a new person. This new individual, freed from troublesome family backgrounds, was able to marry a member of his former family. Such a suicide was frowned upon not because it was a suicide, but because of the Mojave religious belief that families in which incest had occurred would die out.

Suicide and witchcraft often intersected in Mojave culture. Dying people who rejected the helping favors of the shaman called in to treat them were said to be bewitched. By rejecting treatment, the “bewitched person” who died was said to have committed suicide and was condemned for cooperating with evil forces. Additionally, if a witch was murdered, he was said to have everlasting power over those he had bewitched on earth; thus, every witch who is murdered is said to commit a vicarious suicide in order to gain this power. Such a “suicide” is not mourned by the tribe or even by his family; it is rather the natural destiny of witches. Furthermore, in Mojave culture, the suicide of braves seeking death in battle (another example of the “Crazy-Dog-Wishing-To-Die” phenomenon) is seen as the natural pathway of the warrior; braves are not meant to grow old. While the Plains Indians may heap honor upon a warrior who died voluntarily in battle, the Mojave are resigned to a sad fatalism.

Informant reports collected by Devereux observe that a minor custom existed among the Mojave in which the survivors of a person who had died attempted to throw themselves onto the funeral pyre. Apparently, this custom was somewhat encouraged and was thought to demonstrate affection. It was restricted to females, however, and males who attempted to jump on the funeral pyre were ridiculed. Since the Mojave came to expect this gesture, other members of the tribe were also called upon to prevent the burning of the individual, thus making actual suicide a rarity; individuals in mourning knew they would be stopped.

Finally, there are what Devereux calls “real” suicides: a competent individual killing him- or herself by direct, self-inflicted injury. For the Mojave, a major motivation for “real suicide” was the belief that it was the best way to honor and be reunited with deceased loved ones. Another major motivation also included distress at having one’s feelings hurt. Devereux reports that the act of suicide was generally condemned, and people who committed real suicide (especially for reasons of emotional distress) were often viewed as crazy, weak, or stubborn. However, suicides suffered no special punishment in the afterlife: Those who committed suicide, like all others who died, proceeded to relive their earthly life and even their death before they metamorphosed into something else.

West and Northwest Coast

The Native American nations living in the northern California and Canadian coastal areas are listed here from south to north; the last of these areas adjoin groups included elsewhere in this volume under Arctic Cultures [q.v.]. As with other outsiders’ reports of behaviors and practices in orally transmitted cultures, the available accounts are often influenced by a variety of factors, including disciplinary bias, theoretical commitments, and various sorts of ideology. Aginsky’s account of a Pomo group (selection #40), for example, is shaped by an emphasis on psychological analysis of native behavior. Accounts of the Wintu and other northeastern California groups collected by Erminie W. Voegelin in 1936 (selection #41) appear eager to demonstrate the existence of suicide practices that other observers do not substantiate, although it is not clear which accounts are accurate. Voegelin insists that suicide has been practiced at least since the coming of Europeans and probably existed among the Wintu before that; suicide due to familial tensions is often brought about by drowning oneself at a sacred spot on the river, and attempted sati, or funeral suicide, is tolerated or expected, but (as is also reported in the Mojave) routinely interrupted by bystanders, so that the resulting number of actual suicides by widows was therefore minimal.

Brief accounts from the Klamath (selection #42) and a Salish group (selection #43) depict suicide as shameful and as more common among females than males. Among the Kwakiutl, Ruth Benedict reports (1934) (in selection #45) that suicide was common, and that the most common motive was shame; suicide was seen as a way of overcoming this shame and restoring honor.

The report attributed to the fur trader Duncan M’Gillivray (selection #46) may be even more distorted than other somewhat excessive accounts: M’Gillivray is said to have claimed that among the Talkotin, widows and widowers were forced to endure societally imposed torment by the crematory fire and wash themselves in the melted fat of their deceased spouse, as well as other hardships lasting over a period of years; these barbarities, he claimed, were understood as a payment for the sins the living spouse had committed against the dead. Many widows subjected to this treatment, he claimed, chose suicide instead.

Some reports also identify cultural assumptions in which the social assignment for responsibility in a suicide is placed on another individual. The accounts of the Tlingit presented here, including that by Jones (selection #49), point to cultural customs in which other individuals are assumed to have caused a suicide and are held responsible for it, in some cases by having the tribe pay damages, or even by giving a life. Of the Tlingit, Niblack (1887) (selection #48) reports of slaves killed at the funerals of their masters, and adds that they considered such a death a great honor, since slaves who were killed in this manner were buried with their masters and would serve them in the next life; any alternative burial would constitute the disrespectful disposal that slaves were usually given.

Lest reports of practices related to suicide seem more unusual the further north their source, this section closes with a contemporary account of a widespread post-contact problem among the Kaska in 1943–45 (selection #50): suicide and suicidal behavior associated with alcohol use introduced by whites.

Many of these reports are drawn from the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University.

 

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(documented 1635-1970)

Filed under Americas, Indigenous Cultures, North American Indigenous Cultures, North American Native Cultures, The Early Modern Period, The Modern Era

by | · 5:24 pm

HUANG LIUHONG
(1633-c. 1710)

from A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence

 

Huang Liuhong (Huang Liu-hung) was a district magistrate during the early Qing (Ch’ing) or Manchu dynasty (1644–1912), when Manchu values and behavior were being imposed on Han China. He was born in Xinchang (Hsin-ch’ang) at a time of civil conflict and great disorder. When he was 19 years old, Huang passed a civil service exam and earned the juren (chü-jen) degree. He was then able to travel throughout China, educating himself on the history of the provinces he visited. At the time, the ruling Manchu, after decades of violence and political strife, sought the cooperation of educated citizens in an attempt to assuage nationalist opposition. It was in these circumstances that, in 1670, Huang was made magistrate of the Tancheng (T’an-ch’eng) district. He also served as magistrate in other districts and learned enough from his experiences to write a book of guidelines for the office of magistrate. This book, A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence, became a manual for local governors in the Qing dynasty for several centuries.

In this manual, Huang describes types of suicide that were common at the time and distinguishes among the different sorts of intentions under which a person might commit suicide. Suicides committed because of suffering or abuse are to be pitied, he asserts, while those committed for other reasons, like a trivial grudge or to injure an enemy, cannot be condoned. Huang then explains methods he used in his district to lower the number of suicides being committed. This window into the practice of suicide, as well as attitudes about self-killing in 17th century China, gives some evidence of the Chinese assumption that others may play a causal role in suicides and provides a look at one official’s efforts—apparently effective—at suicide prevention.

Source

Huang Liu-Hung, A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence: A Manual for Local Magistrates in Seventeenth-Century China, ed. and tr. Djang Chu. Topic 7, Administration of Justice: Chüan 14, Homicide (Part I); Chüan 15, Homicide (Part II). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1984, pp. 319-320, 355-358.

 

from A COMPLETE BOOK CONCERNING HAPPINESS AND BENEVOLENCE

Homicide

Homicide cases are of two kinds: genuine and counterfeit.  Among the genuine homicide cases there are seven different categories: killing in a robbery (chieh-sha), killing by premeditation (mou-sha), killing by intent (ku-sha), killing in an affray (tou-sha), killing by error (wu-sha), killing in play (his-sha), and killing be accident (kuo-shih-sha).  Counterfeit homicide cases involve people who hang themselves, drown themselves, or cut their own throats—those who are mistakenly considered as homicide victims but in reality are suicides.

Among the seven categories of homicide cases—aside from killing in a robbery—only the criminals who are convicted of killing by premeditation, killing by intent, or killing in an affray are subject to the death penalty.  In each of these cases, however, the victim’s corpse must be examined to ascertain that there are death-causing wounds and the murder weapon inspected to see if the weapon tallies with the wounds.  A murderer forfeits his life only when genuine homicide is proved.  In the absence of an examination of the corpse and an inspection of the weapon, even if it is a genuine homicide case, the suspect’s life cannot be taken away arbitrarily without proof of guilt.  This provision of the law is designed to prevent false accusations and to protect the life of the innocent.

Suicides who hang themselves or kill themselves by other means are generally prompted by temporary emotional outbursts or by the intention of harming their enemies. In such cases the victims take their own lives without serious consideration, and their deaths cannot be attributed to the intentions of their enemies.  However, there are instances in which the victim commits suicide as a result of oppression and browbeating by his enemy.  Such cases must be investigated thoroughly.  On the other hand, there are also cases in which a person dies after a long illness and his relatives bring the corpse to the door of his enemy to make a false accusation of homicide with the intention of blackmailing him.  This kind of false accusation must be severely punished to suppress the evil tendency of making false charges.

The ways to differentiate the seven categories of homicide and the essentials of conducting examinations of corpses are explained below for the reference of magistrates who wish to be cautious in making decisions in order to prevent injustice and to protect the lives of innocent people.

Suicide

Suicide happens to both men and women.  Among women who commit suicide, some kill themselves because of ill treatment at the hands of their parents-in-law, while others do so because of their husband’s cruelties.  These unfortunate women deserve our sympathy.  However, there are cases in which a woman, having a quarrel with her mother-in-law, having an occasional argument with her husband, or having exchanges of heated words with a sister-in-law or even a stranger, kills herself in a paroxysm of distress.  This kind of self-destruction does not constitute a case for condolence.  Often a girl commits suicide because of maltreatment by her stepmother or shame brought on her by an illicit liaison.

As to men who commit suicide, some suicides are due to dire poverty or suffering from extreme cold and hunger; others are the victims of private or official debts without means to repay.  These people are entitled to our compassionate consideration.  But there are those who sacrifice their lives because of insignificant grudges and choose to die in the homes of their enemies, their main purpose being to vent their spleen and let their relatives seize the enemies’ property on trumped-up charges.  Such acts of depravity cannot be condoned.

When a suicide case is reported, the magistrate should go to the place where it happened and examine the corpse immediately.  When real grievances of the deceased can be ascertained, the person who has caused his death should be punished with heavy blows and levied a fine to pay for the burial expenses and to pacify the spirit of the deceased.  On the other hand, if the suicide is committed without provocation or valid reason, the magistrate should order the relatives to have the corpse buried and no innocent people should be implicated in the case.  Thus the evil trend of false accusation can be suppressed and the people will know how important it is to value their own lives.

When I was the magistrate of T’an-ch’eng and later Tungkuang, there were many suicide cases, especially in T’an-ch’eng.  As the land was unproductive, the people lived in abject poverty, with few pleasures in life.  Furthermore, the social trend was toward militancy and ruthlessness; the inhabitants habitually enjoyed fighting one another and paid little attention to the maxims of etiquette and courtesy.  Not infrequently father and son living in the same household turned into enemies on the spur of the moment, and relatives and neighbors in the same village got into fist fights while entertaining and feasting.  Suicides by hanging were daily occurrences and self-destruction by cutting one’s own throat or drowning in the river were common events.

I became alarmed at the situation and said to myself, “The lack of education on the part of youthful delinquents is the fault of their parents.  Not heeding the instruction of their parents is the mistake of the youth themselves.  If I teach them first and punish them later in accordance with the provisions of the law, they cannot complain about the severity of judgments.”  Accordingly, I issued a proclamation that was written in the form of popular doggerel rhymes and ordered copies posted in all villages and city wards.  In doing so I hoped the ignorant females would understand the importance of practicing filial piety and kindness as well as the shame of being vixens and shrews; and that people in all walks of life—merchants, peasants and artisans—would be proud to be law-abiding citizens and would recognize it as disgraceful to be belligerent and quarrelsome.  The main purpose, however, was to eliminate the causes for committing suicide as well as to admonish potential suicides of the legal consequences of taking such futile action.

I said in essence, “Those males who hang themselves from rafters or drown themselves in water will become wandering ghosts, hovering under the roofs or drifting with the waves.  If the officials fail to bury their bodies, they will be infested with and consumed by flies and maggots.  Who is there to have pity on them?  Those females who hang themselves with rope or sashes will become specters haunting narrow alleys and dark rooms.  When an inquest is ordered their naked bodies will be exposed to prying eyes.  Did they not possess a sense of shame when they were living?  The human body is not only a bequest of one’s parents but also a result of countless cycles of reincarnation. That anyone can be degraded enough to destroy it with his own hands and regard it no more important than that of a pig or a dog is something I detest most vigorously.  Why should I value the body bequeathed to someone by his parents if he does not value it himself?  Why should I refrain from treating it as if it were that of a pig or a dog if he himself treats it that way?  From now on, anyone who uses a case of suicides to falsely accuse another of a crime shall be subject to the punishment the alleged crime would have merited.  Anyone who gathers a mob to rob others on the pretext of avenging a suicide shall be punished according to the law on robbery in broad daylight.  Would not this make the one who commits suicide with such a vile scheme in mind sacrifice his life in vain?  This magistrate always back up his words with deeds!  Ye multitudes, reflect on this and realize what is at stake!”

During my tenures of magistracy I strictly ordered all village headmen and local elders to report suicide cases with accurate descriptions and to designate them as such. Whenever a case was reported, I would ride to the locale immediately to examine the corpse.  If it was a genuine suicide case without any suspicious implications, I would investigate the cause of the suicide; those who were involved were punished with blows or fined for burial expenses.  If the suicide was committed without adequate reason and did not deserve sympathy, the relatives of the deceased were ordered to bury the corpse and to sign a statement acknowledging that it was a suicide.

On such occasions I would not issue warrants for arrests and would not bring a large number of runners to the examination.  No matter how far away the place was, I would bring my own ration and would not oblige the family of the deceased to furnish even a cup of tea.  I would order the clerk of the criminal section to record the appearance of the corpse and take down the testimonies of relatives.  No mat shed would be installed for this purpose.  All I needed was a stool and a mat to sit on.  Not a single cash would be spent by the family of the deceased, and they would not be required to appear at the yamen.  The case would be concluded in a day, not even postponed overnight.

If there were unruly people gathering a group of followers, armed with cudgels and weapons, to create disturbances, they would immediately be arrested and punished. The ringleaders would be brought back to the yamen and put in the cangue, then led back to the locality, under the supervision of the village elders, for public exposure.

After I had implemented this policy for half a year, the inhabitants of the district began to get my message and the number of suicide cases decreased dramatically.  After one year no more cases were reported.  Many unnecessary deaths were avoided and I was spared many unpleasant trips.  Who can say that public education and law enforcement do not produce the desired effect in an isolated district?

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(1633-c. 1710)

from A Complete Book Concerning Happiness and Benevolence

Filed under Asia, Huang Liuhong, Poverty, Selections, The Early Modern Period

by | · 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.…

Comments Off on SAMUEL PEPYS
(1633-1703)

from Diary

Filed under Europe, Pepys, Samuel, Selections, The Early Modern Period

by | · 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.

Comments Off on JOHN LOCKE
(1632–1704)

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

Filed under Europe, Locke, John, Selections, Slavery, The Early Modern Period

by | · 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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(1632-1694)

from Of the Law of Nature and Nations

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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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(1632-1677)

from Ethics

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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.

Comments Off on THOMAS HOBBES
(1588-1679)

from Leviathan
from A Dialogue of the Common Laws of England

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

by | · 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.

Comments Off on JOHN SYM
(1581c.-1638)

from Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing

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

by | · 5:17 pm

ROBERT BURTON
(1577-1640)

from Anatomy of Melancholy

 

Born in Lindley, Leicestershire, Robert Burton was an English clergyman and author. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he received bachelor of arts, master of arts, and bachelor of divinity degrees. Working as a tutor and librarian, he was elected a fellow in 1599. From 1616 until his death, he served as vicar nearby at St. Thomas’s Church, living a self-described “silent, sedentary, solitary” lifestyle. His first published work was the Latin comedy Philosophaster (1605).

Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy was originally published in 1621 under the pseudonym Democritus Junior. Burton apparently saw himself as completing the project of Democritus to discover the biological seat of melancholy, including what would now be called depression and related mental illnesses. It is reported that Burton also tried to recreate Democritus’s practice of walking down to the haven at Abdera and laughing heartily at the ridiculous objects that presented themselves to his view, by repairing to the bridge-foot at Oxford and listening to the bargemen swearing at one another, “at which he would set his hands to his sides and laugh most profusely.”

Anatomy of Melancholy is a treatise on the symptoms, causes, and cures of the melancholic or depressive personality. The result of most of his life’s work, Anatomy is encyclopedic in its references to nearly every aspect of 17th-century culture and thought, causing Lord Byron to remark that studying it was the surest way of obtaining “a reputation of being well read.” Focusing particularly on previous theories of cognition but sprinkling the book with classical allusions in a style influenced by Montaigne and the satire of Erasmus, Burton treated the subject of depression in a manner ahead of his time and with a modification of the then-conventional mind/body dualism. The Anatomy was widely read and influenced several later writers, notably John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, and Charles Lamb.

In the section “Prognostics of Melancholy,” Burton treats suicide as the outcome of melancholy, though he also reviews classical and medieval arguments concerning the ethics of suicide. He thus appears to adopt potentially conflicting views: on the one hand, that suicide is the causal consequence of mental illness (and so not under voluntary control), and, on the other, that suicide is a matter of moral choice (which one can make badly). Similar ambivalence about suicide in mental illness persists into contemporary times. In any case, Burton argues that one ought not to be rash in censuring those who commit suicide. Only God alone can tell the reasons for their act and what shall become of their souls, he insists, since they may have repented and been forgiven at the very moment of death, as he famously puts it, “betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat.”

Sources

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 1, Section 4, Member 1, available from Project Gutenberg.  Originally published 1638.  This edition, by Karl Hagen, is based on a nineteenth-century edition that modernized Burton’s spelling and typographic conventions, and has been further corrected. Quotation in biographical sketch from  A. H. Bullen, introduction to Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Rev. A. R. Shilleto, vol. 1, London, George Bell and Sons, 1893, p. xii.

 

from ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY

PROGNOSTICS OF MELANCHOLY

Prognostics, or signs of things to come, are either good or bad. If this malady be not hereditary, and taken at the beginning, there is good hope of cure, recens curationem non habet difficilem, saith Avicenna, l. 3, Fen. 1, Tract. 4, c. 18. That which is with laughter, of all others is most secure, gentle, and remiss, Hercules de Saxonia. “If that evacuation of haemorrhoids, or varices, which they call the water between the skin, shall happen to a melancholy man, his misery is ended,” Hippocrates Aphor. 6, 11. Galen l. 6, de morbis vulgar. com. 8, confirms the same; and to this aphorism of Hippocrates, all the Arabians, new and old Latins subscribe; Montaltus c. 25, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Vittorius Faventinus, &c. Skenkius, l. 1, observat. med. c. de Mania, illustrates this aphorism, with an example of one Daniel Federer a coppersmith that was long melancholy, and in the end mad about the 27th year of his age, these varices or water began to arise in his thighs, and he was freed from his madness. Marius the Roman was so cured, some, say, though with great pain. Skenkius hath some other instances of women that have been helped by flowing of their mouths, which before were stopped. That the opening of the haemorrhoids will do as much for men, all physicians jointly signify, so they be voluntary, some say, and not by compulsion. All melancholy are better after a quartan; Jobertus saith, scarce any man hath that ague twice; but whether it free him from this malady, ’tis a question; for many physicians ascribe all long agues for especial causes, and a quartan ague amongst the rest. Rhasis cont. lib. 1, tract. 9. “When melancholy gets out at the superficies of the skin, or settles breaking out in scabs, leprosy, morphew, or is purged by stools, or by the urine, or that the spleen is enlarged, and those varices appear, the disease is dissolved.” Guianerius, cap. 5, tract. 15, adds dropsy, jaundice, dysentery, leprosy, as good signs, to these scabs, morphews, and breaking out, and proves it out of the 6th of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms.

 

Evil prognostics on the other part. Inveterata melancholia incurabilis, if it be inveterate, it is incurable, a common axiom, aut difficulter curabilis as they say that make the best, hardly cured. This Galen witnesseth, l. 3, de loc. affect. cap. 6, “be it in whom it will, or from what cause soever, it is ever long, wayward, tedious, and hard to be cured, if once it be habituated.” As Lucian said of the gout, she was “the queen of diseases, and inexorable,” may we say of melancholy. Yet Paracelsus will have all diseases whatsoever curable, and laughs at them which think otherwise, as T. Erastus par. 3, objects to him; although in another place, hereditary diseases he accounts incurable, and by no art to be removed. Hildesheim spicel. 2, de mel. holds it less dangerous if only “imagination be hurt, and not reason,” “the gentlest is from blood. Worse from choler adust, but the worst of all from melancholy putrefied.” Bruel esteems hypochondriacal least dangerous, and the other two species (opposite to Galen) hardest to be cured. The cure is hard in man, but much more difficult in women. And both men and women must take notice of that saying of Montanus consil. 230, pro Abate Italo, “This malady doth commonly accompany them to their grave; physicians may ease, and it may lie hid for a time, but they cannot quite cure it, but it will return again more violent and sharp than at first, and that upon every small occasion or error:” as in Mercury’s weather-beaten statue, that was once all over gilt, the open parts were clean, yet there was in fimbriis aurum, in the chinks a remnant of gold: there will be some relics of melancholy left in the purest bodies (if once tainted) not so easily to be rooted out. Oftentimes it degenerates into epilepsy, apoplexy, convulsions, and blindness: by the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, all aver, if once it possess the ventricles of the brain, Frambesarius, and Salust. Salvianus adds, if it get into the optic nerves, blindness. Mercurialis, consil. 20, had a woman to his patient, that from melancholy became epileptic and blind. If it come from a cold cause, or so continue cold, or increase, epilepsy; convulsions follow, and blindness, or else in the end they are moped, sottish, and in all their actions, speeches, and gestures, ridiculous. If it come from a hot cause, they are more furious, and boisterous, and in conclusion mad. Calescentem melancholiam saepius sequitur mania. If it heat and increase, that is the common event, per circuitus, aut semper insanit, he is mad by fits, or altogether. For as Sennertus contends out of Crato, there is seminarius ignis in this humour, the very seeds of fire. If it come from melancholy natural adust, and in excess, they are often demoniacal, Montanus.

Seldom this malady procures death, except (which is the greatest, most grievous calamity, and the misery of all miseries,) they make away themselves, which is a frequent thing, and familiar amongst them. ‘Tis Hippocrates’ observation, Galen’s sentence, Etsi mortem timent, tamen plerumque sibi ipsis mortem consciscunt, l. 3. de locis affec. cap. 7. The doom of all physicians. ‘Tis Rabbi Moses’ Aphorism, the prognosticon of Avicenna, Rhasis, Aetius, Gordonius, Valescus, Altomarus, Salust. Salvianus, Capivaccius, Mercatus, Hercules de Saxonia, Piso, Bruel, Fuchsius, all, &c.

Et saepe usque adeo mortis formidine vitae
Percipit infelix odium lucisque videndae,
Ut sibi consciscat maerenti pectore lethum.

And so far forth death’s terror doth affright,
He makes away himself, and hates the light
To make an end of fear and grief of heart,
He voluntary dies to ease his smart.

In such sort doth the torture and extremity of his misery torment him, that he can take no pleasure in his life, but is in a manner enforced to offer violence unto himself, to be freed from his present insufferable pains. So some (saith Fracastorius) “in fury, but most in despair, sorrow, fear, and out of the anguish and vexation of their souls, offer violence to themselves: for their life is unhappy and miserable. They can take no rest in the night, nor sleep, or if they do slumber, fearful dreams astonish them.” In the daytime they are affrighted still by some terrible object, and torn in pieces with suspicion, fear, sorrow, discontents, cares, shame, anguish, &c. as so many wild horses, that they cannot be quiet an hour, a minute of time, but even against their wills they are intent, and still thinking of it, they cannot forget it, it grinds their souls day and night, they are perpetually tormented, a burden to themselves, as Job was, they can neither eat, drink or sleep. Psal. cvii. 18. “Their soul abhorreth all meat, and they are brought to death’s door, being bound in misery and iron:” they curse their stars with Job, “and day of their birth, and wish for death:” for as Pineda and most interpreters hold, Job was even melancholy to despair, and almost madness itself; they murmur many times against the world, friends, allies, all mankind, even against God himself in the bitterness of their passion, vivere nolunt, mori nesciunt, live they will not, die they cannot. And in the midst of these squalid, ugly, and such irksome days, they seek at last, finding no comfort, no remedy in this wretched life, to be eased of all by death. Omnia appetunt bonum, all creatures seek the best, and for their good as they hope, sub specie, in show at least, vel quia mori pulchrum putant (saith Hippocrates) vel quia putant inde se majoribus malis liberari, to be freed as they wish. Though many times, as Aesop’s fishes, they leap from the frying-pan into the fire itself, yet they hope to be eased by this means: and therefore (saith Felix Platerus) “after many tedious days at last, either by drowning, hanging, or some such fearful end,” they precipitate or make away themselves: “many lamentable examples are daily seen amongst us:” alius ante, fores se laqueo suspendit (as Seneca notes), alius se praecipitavit a tecto, ne dominum stomachantem audiret, alius ne reduceretur a fuga ferrum redegit in viscera, “one hangs himself before his own door,—another throws himself from the house-top, to avoid his master’s anger,—a third, to escape expulsion, plunges a dagger into his heart,”—so many causes there are—His amor exitio est, furor his—love, grief, anger, madness, and shame, &c. ‘Tis a common calamity, a fatal end to this disease, they are condemned to a violent death, by a jury of physicians, furiously disposed, carried headlong by their tyrannising wills, enforced by miseries, and there remains no more to such persons, if that heavenly Physician, by his assisting grace and mercy alone do not prevent, (for no human persuasion or art can help) but to be their own butchers, and execute themselves. Socrates his cicuta, Lucretia’s dagger, Timon’s halter, are yet to be had; Cato’s knife, and Nero’s sword are left behind them, as so many fatal engines, bequeathed to posterity, and will be used to the world’s end, by such distressed souls: so intolerable, insufferable, grievous, and violent is their pain, so unspeakable and continuate. One day of grief is an hundred years, as Cardan observes: ‘Tis carnificina hominum, angor animi, as well saith Areteus, a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart.

For that deep torture may be call’d an hell,
When more is felt, than one hath power to tell.
Yea, that which scoffing Lucian said of the gout in jest, I may truly affirm of melancholy in earnest.

O triste nomen! o diis odibile
Melancholia lacrymosa, Cocyti filia,
Tu Tartari specubus opacis edita
Erinnys, utero quam Megara suo tulit,
Et ab uberibus aluit, cuique parvidae
Amarulentum in os lac Alecto dedit,
Omnes abominabilem te daemones
Produxere in lucem, exitio mortalium.
Et paulo post
Non Jupiter ferit tale telum fulminis,
Non ulla sic procella saevit aequoris,
Non impetuosi tanta vis est turbinis.
An asperos sustineo morsus Cerberi?
Num virus Echidnae membra mea depascitur?
Aut tunica sanie tincta Nessi sanguinis?
Illacrymabile et immedicabile malum hoc.

O sad and odious name! a name so fell,
Is this of melancholy, brat of hell.
There born in hellish darkness doth it dwell,
The Furies brought it up, Megara’s teat,
Alecto gave it bitter milk to eat.
And all conspir’d a bane to mortal men,
To bring this devil out of that black den.
Jupiter’s thunderbolt, not storm at sea,
Nor whirlwind doth our hearts so much dismay.
What? am I bit by that fierce Cerberus?
Or stung by serpent so pestiferous?
Or put on shirt that’s dipt in Nessus’ blood?
My pain’s past cure; physic can do no good.
No torture of body like unto it,
Siculi non invenere tyranni majus tormentum, no strappadoes, hot irons, Phalaris’ bulls,
Nec ira deum tantum, nec tela, nec hostis,
Quantum sola noces animis illapsa.
Jove’s wrath, nor devils can
Do so much harm to th’ soul of man.

All fears, griefs, suspicions, discontents, imbonites, insuavities are swallowed up, and drowned in this Euripus, this Irish sea, this ocean of misery, as so many small brooks; ’tis coagulum omnium aerumnarum: which Ammianus applied to his distressed Palladins. I say of our melancholy man, he is the cream of human adversity, the quintessence, and upshot; all other diseases whatsoever, are but flea-bitings to melancholy in extent:

‘Tis the pith of them all,

Hospitium est calamitatis; quid verbis opus est?
Quamcunque malam rem quaeris, illic reperies:

What need more words? ’tis calamities inn,
Where seek for any mischief, ’tis within;

and a melancholy man is that true Prometheus, which is bound to Caucasus; the true Titius, whose bowels are still by a vulture devoured (as poets feign) for so doth Lilius Geraldus interpret it, of anxieties, and those griping cares, and so ought it to be understood. In all other maladies, we seek for help, if a leg or an arm ache, through any distemperature or wound, or that we have an ordinary disease, above all things whatsoever, we desire help and health, a present recovery, if by any means possible it may be procured; we will freely part with all our other fortunes, substance, endure any misery, drink bitter potions, swallow those distasteful pills, suffer our joints to be seared, to be cut off, anything for future health: so sweet, so dear, so precious above all other things in this world is life: ’tis that we chiefly desire, long life and happy days, multos da Jupiter annos, increase of years all men wish; but to a melancholy man, nothing so tedious, nothing so odious; that which they so carefully seek to preserve he abhors, he alone; so intolerable are his pains; some make a question, graviores morbi corporis an animi, whether the diseases of the body or mind be more grievous, but there is no comparison, no doubt to be made of it, multo enim saevior longeque est atrocior animi, quam corporis cruciatus (Lem. l. 1. c. 12.) the diseases of the mind are far more grievous.—Totum hic pro vulnere corpus, body and soul is misaffected here, but the soul especially. So Cardan testifies de rerum var. lib. 8. 40.Maximus Tyrius a Platonist, and Plutarch, have made just volumes to prove it. Dies adimit aegritudinem hominibus, in other diseases there is some hope likely, but these unhappy men are born to misery, past all hope of recovery, incurably sick, the longer they live the worse they are, and death alone must ease them.

Another doubt is made by some philosophers, whether it be lawful for a man in such extremity of pain and grief, to make away himself: and how these men that so do are to be censured. The Platonists approve of it, that it is lawful in such cases, and upon a necessity; Plotinus l. de beatitud. c. 7. and Socrates himself defends it, in Plato’s Phaedon, “if any man labour of an incurable disease, he may despatch himself, if it be to his good.” Epicurus and his followers, the cynics and stoics in general affirm it, Epictetus and Seneca amongst the rest, quamcunque veram esse viam ad libertatem, any way is allowable that leads to liberty, “let us give God thanks, that no man is compelled to live against his will;” quid ad hominem claustra, career, custodia? liberum ostium habet, death is always ready and at hand. Vides illum praecipitem locum, illud flumen, dost thou see that steep place, that river, that pit, that tree, there’s liberty at hand, effugia servitutis et doloris sunt, as that Laconian lad cast himself headlong (non serviam aiebat puer) to be freed of his misery: every vein in thy body, if these be nimis operosi exitus, will set thee free, quid tua refert finem facias an accipias? there’s no necessity for a man to live in misery. Malum est necessitati vivere; sed in necessitate vivere, necessitas nulla est. Ignavus qui sine causa moritur, et stultus qui cum dolore vivit. Idem epi. 58. Wherefore hath our mother the earth brought out poisons, saith Pliny, in so great a quantity, but that men in distress might make away themselves? which kings of old had ever in a readiness, ad incerta fortunae venenum sub custode promptum, Livy writes, and executioners always at hand. Speusippes being sick was met by Diogenes, and carried on his slaves’ shoulders, he made his moan to the philosopher; but I pity thee not, quoth Diogenes, qui cum talis vivere sustines, thou mayst be freed when thou wilt, meaning by death. Seneca therefore commends Cato, Dido, and Lucretia, for their generous courage in so doing, and others that voluntarily die, to avoid a greater mischief, to free themselves from misery, to save their honour, or vindicate their good name, as Cleopatra did, as Sophonisba, Syphax’s wife did, Hannibal did, as Junius Brutus, as Vibius Virus, and those Campanian senators in Livy (Dec. 3. lib. 6.) to escape the Roman tyranny, that poisoned themselves. Themistocles drank bull’s blood, rather than he would fight against his country, and Demosthenes chose rather to drink poison, Publius Crassi filius, Censorius and Plancus, those heroical Romans to make away themselves, than to fall into their enemies’ hands. How many myriads besides in all ages might I remember, qui sibi lethum Insontes pepperere manu, &c. Rhasis in the Maccabees is magnified for it, Samson’s death approved. So did Saul and Jonas sin, and many worthy men and women, quorum memoria celebratur in Ecclesia, saith Leminchus, for killing themselves to save their chastity and honour, when Rome was taken, as Austin instances, l. 1. de Civit. Dei, cap. 16. Jerome vindicateth the same in Ionam and Ambrose, l. 3. de virginitate commendeth Pelagia for so doing. Eusebius, lib. 8. cap. 15. admires a Roman matron for the same fact to save herself from the lust of Maxentius the Tyrant. Adelhelmus, abbot of Malmesbury, calls them Beatas virgines quae sic, &c. Titus Pomponius Atticus, that wise, discreet, renowned Roman senator, Tully’s dear friend, when he had been long sick, as he supposed, of an incurable disease, vitamque produceret ad augendos dolores, sine spe salutis, was resolved voluntarily by famine to despatch himself to be rid of his pain; and when as Agrippa, and the rest of his weeping friends earnestly besought him, osculantes obsecrarent ne id quod natura cogeret, ipse acceleraret, not to offer violence to himself, “with a settled resolution he desired again they would approve of his good intent, and not seek to dehort him from it:” and so constantly died, precesque eorum taciturna sua obstinatione depressit. Even so did Corellius Rufus, another grave senator, by the relation of Plinius Secundus, epist. lib. 1. epist. 12. famish himself to death; pedibus correptus cum incredibiles cruciatus et indignissima tormenta pateretur, a cibis omnino abstinuit; neither he nor Hispilla his wife could divert him, but destinatus mori obstinate magis, &c. die he would, and die he did. So did Lycurgus, Aristotle, Zeno, Chrysippus, Empedocles, with myriads, &c. In wars for a man to run rashly upon imminent danger, and present death, is accounted valour and magnanimity, to be the cause of his own, and many a thousand’s ruin besides, to commit wilful murder in a manner, of himself and others, is a glorious thing, and he shall be crowned for it. The Massegatae in former times, Barbiccians, and I know not what nations besides, did stifle their old men, after seventy years, to free them from those grievances incident to that age. So did the inhabitants of the island of Choa, because their air was pure and good, and the people generally long lived, antevertebant fatum suum, priusquam manci forent, aut imbecillitas accederet, papavere vel cicuta, with poppy or hemlock they prevented death. Sir Thomas More in his Utopia commends voluntary death, if he be sibi aut aliis molestus, troublesome to himself or others, ( “especially if to live be a torment to him,) let him free himself with his own hands from this tedious life, as from a prison, or suffer himself to be freed by others.” And ’tis the same tenet which Laertius relates of Zeno, of old, Juste sapiens sibi mortem consciscit, si in acerbis doloribus versetur, membrorum mutilatione aut morbis aegre curandis, and which Plato 9. de legibus approves, if old age, poverty, ignominy, &c. oppress, and which Fabius expresseth in effect. (Praefat. 7. Institut.) Nemo nisi sua culpa diu dolet. It is an ordinary thing in China, (saith Mat. Riccius the Jesuit,) “if they be in despair of better fortunes, or tired and tortured with misery, to bereave themselves of life, and many times, to spite their enemies the more, to hang at their door.” Tacitus the historian, Plutarch the philosopher, much approve a voluntary departure, and Aust. de civ. Dei, l. 1. c. 29. defends a violent death, so that it be undertaken in a good cause, nemo sic mortuus, qui non fuerat aliquando moriturus; quid autem interest, quo mortis genere vita ista finiatur, quando ille cui finitur, iterum mori non cogitur? &c. no man so voluntarily dies, but volens nolens, he must die at last, and our life is subject to innumerable casualties, who knows when they may happen, utrum satius est unam perpeti moriendo, an omnes timere vivendo, rather suffer one, than fear all. “Death is better than a bitter life,” Eccl. xxx. 17. and a harder choice to live in fear, than by once dying, to be freed from all. Theombrotus Ambraciotes persuaded I know not how many hundreds of his auditors, by a luculent oration he made of the miseries of this, and happiness of that other life, to precipitate themselves. And having read Plato’s divine tract de anima, for example’s sake led the way first. That neat epigram of Callimachus will tell you as much,

Jamque vale Soli cum diceret Ambrociotes,
In Stygios fertur desiluisse lacus,
Morte nihil dignum passus: sed forte Platonis
Divini eximum de nece legit opus.

Calenus and his Indians hated of old to die a natural death: the Circumcellians and Donatists, loathing life, compelled others to make them away, with many such: but these are false and pagan positions, profane stoical paradoxes, wicked examples, it boots not what heathen philosophers determine in this kind, they are impious, abominable, and upon a wrong ground. “No evil is to be done that good may come of it;” reclamat Christus, reclamat Scriptura, God, and all good men are against it: He that stabs another, can kill his body; but he that stabs himself, kills his own soul. Male meretur, qui dat mendico, quod edat; nam et illud quod dat, perit; et illi producit vitam ad miseriam: he that gives a beggar an alms (as that comical poet said) doth ill, because he doth but prolong his miseries. But Lactantius l. 6. c. 7. de vero cultu, calls it a detestable opinion, and fully confutes it, lib. 3. de sap. cap. 18. and S. Austin, epist. 52. ad Macedonium, cap. 61. ad Dulcitium Tribunum: so doth Hierom to Marcella of Blesilla’s death, Non recipio tales animas, &c., he calls such men martyres stultae Philosophiae: so doth Cyprian de duplici martyrio; Si qui sic moriantur, aut infirmitas, aut ambitio, aut dementia cogit eos; ’tis mere madness so to do, furore est ne moriare mori. To this effect writes Arist. 3. Ethic. Lipsius Manuduc. ad Stoicam Philosophiaem lib. 3. dissertat. 23. but it needs no confutation. This only let me add, that in some cases, those hard censures of such as offer violence to their own persons, or in some desperate fit to others, which sometimes they do, by stabbing, slashing, &c. are to be mitigated, as in such as are mad, beside themselves for the time, or found to have been long melancholy, and that in extremity, they know not what they do, deprived of reason, judgment, all, as a ship that is void of a pilot, must needs impinge upon the next rock or sands, and suffer shipwreck. P. Forestus hath a story of two melancholy brethren, that made away themselves, and for so foul a fact, were accordingly censured to be infamously buried, as in such cases they use: to terrify others, as it did the Milesian virgins of old; but upon farther examination of their misery and madness, the censure was revoked, and they were solemnly interred, as Saul was by David, 2 Sam. ii. 4. and Seneca well adviseth, Irascere interfectori, sed miserere interfecti; be justly offended with him as he was a murderer, but pity him now as a dead man. Thus of their goods and bodies we can dispose; but what shall become of their souls, God alone can tell; his mercy may come inter pontem et fontem, inter gladium et jugulum, betwixt the bridge and the brook, the knife and the throat. Quod cuiquam contigit, quivis potest: Who knows how he may be tempted? It is his case, it may be thine: Quae sua sors hodie est, eras fore vestra potest. We ought not to be so rash and rigorous in our censures, as some are; charity will judge and hope the best: God be merciful unto us all.

Comments Off on ROBERT BURTON
(1577-1640)

from Anatomy of Melancholy

Filed under Burton, Robert, Europe, Martyrdom, Mental Illness: depression, despair, insanity, delusion, Selections, The Early Modern Period

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JOHN DONNE
(1572–1631)

from Biathanatos

 

John Donne, the English metaphysical poet and, after 1621, Dean of St. Paul’s, was a writer of sonnets, songs, elegies, satires, and sermons. It is for his poetic works, many with religious themes, that he is principally known today. Raised as a Roman Catholic in times of pervasive anti-Catholic sentiment, Donne was educated at home before attending Oxford and Cambridge; however, he did not take degrees there, probably because of the requirement of the Oath of Supremacy. In 1592, he pursued an education in law, but in 1596, joined a military expedition to Cádiz and later a treasure-hunting expedition in the Azores. It is not known precisely when he abandoned Catholicism, but by 1597, he had conformed sufficiently with the Church of England to hold a government position, becoming secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper and a member of Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council. Donne served in Parliament and made friends and acquaintances in influential circles, but his excellent prospects collapsed early in 1602 when Donne—then 30 years old—revealed that he had secretly married Anne More, the 17-year-old niece and protegée of Egerton’s wife. Donne was briefly imprisoned, though the legal validity of the marriage was upheld, and he endured a long period of unemployment following his release.

Donne wrote Biathanatos, an extended essay on suicide, in 1608. A letter to his friend Henry Goodyer in the same year is often cited as evidence of his troubled mood during this period:

Every Tuesday I make account that I turn a great hourglass, and consider what a week’s life is run out since I writ. But if I ask myself what I have done in the last watch, or would do in the next, I can say nothing. If I say that I have passed it without hurting any, so may the spider in my window. . . . I have often suspected myself to be overtaken . . . with a desire of the next life, which, though I know it is not merely out of a weariness of this . . . [I suspect] worldly encumbrances have increased. . . .

One school of interpretation sees Biathanatos as an epiphenomenon of Donne’s morbid condition, though Donne’s argument in the work would not excuse a suicide from personal distress. Other commentators see in it an attempt by Donne to overcome temptation. But it is also a public work, though not actually published during Donne’s lifetime, one that shares with his Pseudo-Martyr (written no more than a year later) partisan and controversial aims addressed to a broad audience.

Biathanatos is a long and extremely difficult work with a challenging and, Donne says, “paradoxical” thesis. It undertakes an exhaustive analysis of both secular and religious argumentation against suicide, and argues that suicide is “not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.” Most cases of suicide, including those committed from despair, self-protection, self-aggrandizement, fear of suffering, impatience to reach the afterlife, or other self-interested motives are indeed sinful. But, Donne argues, suicide is justified when, like submission to martyrdom, it is done with charity, done for the glory of God. Indeed, in Donne’s highly unconventional view, Christ himself, in not merely allowing himself to be crucified but in voluntarily emitting his last breath on the cross, was in fact a suicide. This is the model by which men ought to be willing to lay down their lives for their brethren. However, Donne argues elsewhere in Biathanatos, because suicide is so likely to be committed for self-interested reasons rather than wholly for the glory of God, it is appropriate for both civil and canon law to prohibit it.

Donne recognized that his unconventional thesis was “misinterpretable,” and it is probably for this reason that he did not allow Biathanatos to be published. He directed his friend Robert Ker, to whom he gave a copy, to “keep it . . . with . . . jealousy. . . . Publish it not, but yet burn it not.” While Donne’s Biathanatos was the first full-length book devoted to the topic of suicide written in the Western tradition, John Sym’s Lifes Preservative Against Self-Killing (1637) [q.v.] was the first to be published; Donne’s work was not published until a decade later, in 1647, after his death and against his wishes, by his son.

Source

John Donne, Biathanatos, A Modern-Spelling Edition, Part III, Distinction iv, sections 1-11, lines 4692-4992, eds. Michael Rudick and M. Pabst Battin. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982, pp. 166-176. Quotation in introduction, pp. xi-xii.

 

from BIATHANATOS

To Prepare us, therefore, to a right understanding and application of these places of Scripture, we must arrest awhile upon the nature, and degrees, and effects of charity, the mother and form of all virtue, which shall not only lead us to heaven, for faith opens us the door, but shall continue with us when we are there, when both faith and hope are spent and useless.

We shall nowhere find a better portrait of charity than that which St. Augustine hath drawn: “She loves not that which should not be loved, she neglects not that which should be loved, she bestows not more love upon that which deserves less, nor doth she equally love more and less worthiness, nor upon equal worthiness bestow more and less love.” To this charity, the same blessed and happy father proportions this growth: Inchoated, increased, grown great, and perfected, and this last is, saith he, when in respect of it we contemn this life. And yet he acknowledgeth a higher charity than this; for, Peter Lombard allowing charity this growth, beginning, proficient, perfect, more and most perfect, he cites St. Augustine, who calls that perfect charity to be ready to die for one another. But when he comes to that than which none can be greater, he says then, the Apostle came to cupio dissolvi. For as one may love God with all his heart, and yet he may grow in that love, and love God more with all his heart, for the first was commanded in the Law, and yet counsel of perfection was given to him who said that he had fulfilled the first commandment, so, as St. Augustine found a degree above that charity which made a man paratum ponere, which is cupere, so there is a degree above that, which is to do it.

This is that virtue by which martyrdom, which is not such of itself, becomes an act of highest perfection. And this is that virtue which assureth any suffering which proceeds from it to be infallibly accompanied with the grace of God. Upon assuredness, therefore, and testimony of a rectified conscience that wehave a charitable purpose, let us consider how far we may adventure upon authority of Scripture in this matter which we have in hand.

First, therefore, by the frame and working of St. Paul’s argument to the Corinthians, “though I give my body that I be burned, and have not love, it profiteth nothing,” these two things appear evidently; first, that in a general notion and common reputation, it was esteemed a high degree of perfection to die so, and therefore not against the law of nature; and secondly, by this exception, without charity, it appears that with charily it might well and profitably be done.

For the first, if any think that the Apostle here takes example of an impossible thing, as when itis said, “if an angel from heaven teach other doctrine,” he will, I think, correct himself if he consider the former verses and the Apostle’s progress in his argument, wherein, to dignify charity the most that he can, he undervalues all other gifts which were there ambitiously affected. For eloquence, he says it is nothing to have all languages, no, not of angels, which is not put literally, for they havenone, but to express a high degree of eloquence, as Calvin says here; or, as Lyra says, by language of angels is meant the desire of communicating our conceptions to one another. And then headdsthat knowledge of mysteries and prophecies is also nothing which was also much affected. And for miraculous faith, it is also nothing. For the first of these gifts doth not make a man better, for Balaam’s ass could speak and was still an ass; and the second Judas had, and the Pharisees; and the third is so small a matter that as much as a grain of mustard seed is enough to removemountains. All these, therefore, were feasible things, and were sometimes done. So also, after he had passed through the gifts of knowledge and gifts of utterance, he presents the gifts of working in the same manner; and therefore, as he says, “if I feed the poor with all my goods,” which he presents as a harder thing than either of the other (for in the other, God gives me, but here I give other), yet possible to be done, so he presents the last, “if I give my body,” as the hardest of all, and yet, as all the rest, sometimes to be done.

That which I observed … secondly to arise from this argument was that, with charity, such a death might be acceptable. . . . And though I know the Donatists are said to have made this use of these words, yet, because the intent and end conditions every action and infuses the poison or the nourishment which they which follow suck from thence, and we know that the Donatists rigorously and tyrannously racked and detorted thus much from this place that they might present themselves to others promiscuously to be killed, and if that weredenied to them, they might kill themselves and them who refused it, yet, I say, I doubt not but thus much may naturally be collected from hence, that by this word “if I give my body” is insinuated somewhat more than a prompt and willing yielding of it when I am enforced to it by the persecuting magistrate; and that these words will justify the fact of the martyr Nicephorus’ being then in perfect charity, whose case was that, having had some enmity with Sapritius, who was brought to the place where he was to receive the bloody crown of martyrdom, he fell down to Sapritius and begged from him then a pardon of all former bitternesses; but Sapritius, elated with the glory of martyrdom, refused him, but was presently punished, for his faith cooled, and he recanted, and lived. And Nicephorus, standing by, stepped in to his room and cried, “I am also a Christian!” and so provoked the magistrate to execute him, lest from the faintness of Sapritius the cause might have received a wound or a scorn. And this I take to be “giving of his body.”

Of which, as there may be such necessity, for confirming of weaker Christians, that a man may be bound to do it, as in this case is very probable, so there may be cases, in men very exemplary, and in the cunning and subtle carriage of the persecutor, as one can no other way give his body for testimony of God’s truth, to which he may then be bound, but by doing it himself.

As, therefore, naturally and customarily, men thought it good to die so, and that such a death, with charity, was acceptable, so is it generally said by Christ that “the good shepherd doth give his life for his sheep,” which is a justifying and approbation of our inclination thereunto, for to say “the good do it” is to say “they which do it are good.” And as we are all sheep of one fold, so in many cases we are all shepherds of one another, and owe one another this duty of giving our temporal lives for another’s spiritual advantage, yea, for his temporal. For that I may abstain from purging myself when another’s crime is imputed to me is grounded upon such another text as this, where it is said the greatest love is to bestow his life for his friends; in which, and all of this kind, we must remember that we are commanded to do it so as Christ did it, and how Christ gave His body we shall have another place to consider.

Hereupon, because St. Peter’s zeal was so forward, and carried him so high that he would die for the Shepherd, for so he says, “I will lay down my life for Thy sake,” and this, as all expositors say, was merely and purely out of natural affection, without examination of his own strength to perform it, but presently and roundly, nature carried him to that promise. And, upon a more deliberate and orderly resolution, St. Paul witnesseth of himself such a willingness to die for his brethren: “I will be gladly bestowed for your souls.”

A Christian nature rests not in knowing thus much, that we may do it, that charity makes it good, that the good do it, and that we must always promise, that is, incline, to do it and do something towards it, but will have the perfect fullness of doing it in the resolution and doctrine and example of our blessed Savior, who says de facto, “I lay down my life for my sheep.” . . .And, saith Musculus, He useth the present word because He was ready to do it, and as Paul and Barnabas, men yet alive, are said to have laid down their lives for Christ. But I rather think, because exposing to danger is not properly called a dying, that Christ said this now because His passion was begun, for all His conversations here were degrees of examination.

To express the abundant and overflowing charity of our Savior all words are defective, for if we could express all which He did, that came not near to that which He would do if need were. It is observed by one . . .(I confess, too credulous an author,but yet one that administers good and wholesome incitements to devotion) that Christ, going to Emmaus, spake of His passion so slightly, as though He had in three days forgot all that He had suffered for us, and that Christ, in an apparition to St. Charles, says that He would be content to die again, if need were; yea, to St. Bridget He said that for any one soul He would suffer as much in every limb as He had suffered for all the world in His whole body. And this is noted for an extreme high degree of charity, out of Anselm, that His blessed Mother said, rather than He should not have been crucified, she would have done it with her own hands, and certainly His charity was not inferior to hers: He did as much as any could be willing to do.

And therefore, as Himself said, “No man can take away my soul,” and “I have power to lay it down.” So without doubt, no man did take it away, nor was there any other than His own will the cause of His dying at that time . . , many martyrs having hanged upon crosses many days alive; and the thieves were yet alive, and therefore Pilate wondered to hear that Christ was dead. His soul, saith St. Augustine, did not leave His body constrained, but “ because He would, and when He would, and how He would”; of which St. Thomas produces this symptom, that He had yet His body’s nature in her full strength, because at the last moment He was able to cry with a loud voice; and Marlorate gathers it upon this, that whereas our heads decline after our death by the slackness of the sinews and muscles, Christ did first, of Himself, bow down His head, and then give up the ghost. So, though it be truly said, after they have scourged Him, they will put Him to death, yet it is said so because maliciously and purposely to kill Him they inflicted those pains upon Him, which would in time have killed Him, but yet nothing which they had done occasioned His death so soon.

And therefore St. Thomas, a man neither of unholy thoughts nor of bold or irreligious or scandalous phrase or elocution (yet I adventure not so far in his behalf as Sylvester doth, that it is impossible that he should have spoken anything against faith or good manners ), forbears not to say that “Christ was so much the cause of His death as he is of his wetting, which might and would not shut the window when the rain beats in.”

This actual emission of His soul, which is death, and which was His own act, and before His natural time (which His best beloved apostle could imitate, who also died when he would and went into his grave, and there gave up the ghost and buried himself, which is reported but of very few others, and by no very credible authors), we find thus celebrated: that thatis a brave death which isaccepted unconstrained, and that it is an heroic act of fortitude if a man, when an urgent occasion is presented, expose himself to a certain and assured death, as He did; and it is there said that Christ did so as Saul did, who thought it foul and dishonorable to die by the hand of an enemy; and that Apollonia, and others who prevented the fury of executioners and cast themselves into the fire, did therein imitate this act of our Savior, of giving up His soul before he was constrained to do it. So that, if the act of our blessed Savior, in whom there was no more required for death but that He should will that His soul should go out, were the same as Saul’s and these martyrs’ actual furtherance, which could not die without that, then we are taught that all those places of giving up our bodies to death, and of laying down the soul, signify more than a yielding to death when it comes.

And to my understanding there is a further degree of alacrity and propenseness to such a death, expressed in that phrase of John, “he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal,” and in that of Luke, “except he hate his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Such a loathness to live is that which is spoken of in the Hebrews: “some were racked and would not be delivered, that they might receive a better resurrection.” This place Calvin interprets of a readiness to die, and expresses it elegantly: to carry our life in our hands, offering it to God for a sacrifice. And this the Jesuits in their rule extend thus far, let everyone think that this was said directly to him: Hate thy life. And they who in the other placeaccept this phrase “No man hateth his own f1esh” to yield an argument against self-homicide in any case, must also allow that the same hate being commanded here authorizes that act in some case. And St. Augustine, apprehending the strength of this place, denies that by the authority of it the Donatists can justify their self-homicide when they list to die; but yet in those cases which are exempt from his rules, this place may encourage a man not to neglect the honor of God only upon this reason, that nobody else will take his life.

And therefore, the Holy Ghost proceeds more directly in the first Epistle of St. John, and shows us a necessary duty: Because He laid down His life for us, therefore we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren. All these places work us to a true understanding of charity, and to a contempt of this life in respect of it. And, as these inform us how ready we must be, so all those places which direct us by the example of Christ to do it as He did, show that in cases when our lives must be given, we need not ever attend extrinsic force of others. Bbut, as He did in perfect charity, so we, in such degrees of it as this life and our nature are capable of, must die by our own will, rather than His glory be neglected, whensoever, as Paul saith, Christ may be magnified in our bodies, or the spiritual good of such another as we are bound to advance doth importune it.

To which readiness of dying for his brethren St. Paul had so accustomed himself, and made it his nature, that, but for his general resolution of doing that ever which should promote their happiness, he could scarce have obtained of himself leave to live. For at first, he says, he knew not which to wish, lifeor death (and therefore, generally, without some circumstance incline or avert us, they are equal to our nature); then, after much perplexity, he was resolved, and desired to be loose, and to be with Christ (therefore, a holy man may wish it); but yet, he corrected that again, because, saith he, “to abide in the flesh ismore needful for you.” And therefore charity must be the rule of our wishes and actions in this point.

There is another place to the Galatians which, though it reach not to death, yet it proves that holy men may be ready to express their loves to one another by violence to themselves, for he saith, “if it had been possible, you would have plucked out your own eyes and given me”; and Calvin saith this was more than vitam profundere. And this readiness St. Paul reprehends not in them.

But of the highest degree of compassionate charity for others is that of the Apostle in contemplation of the Jews’ dereliction: I would wish myself to be separated from Christ for my brethren. The bitterness of which anathema himself teaches us to understand when, in another place, he wishes the same to those which love not Jesus Christ. And this fearful wish, which charity excused in him, was utter damnation, as all expositors say. And though I believe with Calvin that at this time, in a zealous fury, he remembered not deliberately his own election, and therefore cannot in that respect be said to have resisted the will of God, yet it remains as an argument to us that charity will recompense and justify many excesses which seem unnatural and irregular and enormous transportations.

As in this Apostle of the gentiles, so in the lawgiver of the Jews the like compassion wrought the like effect, and more; for Moses rested not in wishing, but face to face argued with God: “If thou pardon them, thy mercy shall appear, but if thou wilt not, I pray thee, blot my name out of the book which thou hast written. I know that many, out of a reasonable collection that it became Moses to be reposed and dispassioned and of ordinate affections in his conversation with God, are of opinion that he strayed no further in this wish and imprecation than to be content that his name should be blotted out of the Scriptures, and so to lose the honor of being known to posterity for a remarkable instrument of God’s power and mercy. But, since a natural infirmity could work so much upon Christ, in whom there may be suspected no inordinateness of affections, as to divert Him a little and make Him slip a faint wish of escaping the cup, why might not a brave and noble zeal exalt Moses so much as to desire to restore such a nation to the love of God by his own destruction?

For, as certainly the first of these was without sin, so the other might be, out of an habitual assuredness of his salvation. As PauIinus says to Amandus, thou mayst be bold in thy prayers to God for me to say, “Forgive him or blot out me,” for thou canst not be blotted out; iuslum delere non potest iustilia. And thus, retaining ever in our minds that our example is Christ, and that He died not constrained, it shall suffice to have learned by these places that, in charity, men may die so, and have done, and ought to do.

Comments Off on JOHN DONNE
(1572–1631)

from Biathanatos

Filed under Christianity, Donne, John, Europe, Martyrdom, Selections, The Early Modern Period