violent death. But a thing equally strange, and a blasphemy almost unaccountable, is the fancy of a Prussian or Saxon baron, who wrote a book to prove that Christ committed suicide, for which he had no other argument than that, in fact, he had surrendered himself unresistingly into the hands of his enemies, and had in a manner caused his own death. This, however, describes the case of every martyr that ever was or can be. It is the very merit and grandeur of the martyr, that he proclaims the truth with his eyes open to the consequences of proclaiming it. Those consequences are connected with the truth, but not by any natural link: the connexion is by means of false views, which it is the very business of the martyr to destroy. And, if a man founds my death upon an act which my conscience enjoins, even though I am aware and fully warned that he will found my death upon it, I am not, therefore, guilty of suicide. For, by the supposition, I was obliged to the act in question by the highest of all obligations, viz. moral obligation, which far transcends all physical obligation; so that, whatever excuse attaches to a physical necessity, attaches, à fortiori, to the moral necessity. The case is, therefore, precisely the same as if he had said—"I will put you to death if the frost benumbs your feet." The answer is—"I cannot help this effect of frost." Far less can I help revealing a celestial truth. I have no power, no liberty, to forbear. And, in killing me, he punishes me for a mere necessity of my situation and my knowledge.
It is urged that brutes never commit suicide—except, indeed, the salamander, who has been suspected of loose principles in this point; and we ourselves knew a man who constantly affirmed that a horse of his had committed suicide, by violently throwing himself from the summit of a precipice. "But why"—as we still asked him—"why should the horse have committed felony on himself? Were oats rising in the market?—or was he in love?—or vexed by politics?—or could a horse, and a young one rising four, be supposed to suffer from tædium vitæ?" Meantime, as respects the general question of brute suicides, two points must be regarded,—1st, That brutes are cut off from the vast world of moral and imaginative sufferings entailed upon man; 2dly, That this very immunity presupposes another immunity—
"A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain,"
in the far coarser and less irritable animal organization which must be the basis of an insulated physical sensibility. Brutes can neither suffer from intellectual passions, nor, probably, from very complex derangements of the animal system; so that in them the motives to suicide, the temptations to suicide, are prodigiously diminished. Nor are they ever alive to "the sublime attractions of the grave." It is, however, a humiliating reflection, that, if any brutes can feel such aspirations, it must be those which are under the care of man. Doubtless the happiness of brutes is sometimes extended by man; but also, too palpably, their misery.
Why suicide is not noticed in the New Testament is a problem yet open to the profound investigator.
VI. Duelling—No one case, in the vast volume of casuistry, is so difficult to treat with justice and reasonable adaptation to the spirit of modern times, as this of duelling. For, as to those who reason all upon one side, and never hearken in good faith to objections or difficulties, such people convince nobody but those who were already convinced before they began. At present, (1839,) society has for some years been taking a lurch to one side against duelling: but inevitably a reaction
not the act of suicide, but a suicidal person. And possibly Donne, who was a good scholar, may so mean it to be understood in his title-page. Heliogabalus, says Lampridius, had been told by the Syrian priests that he should be Biathanatos, i.e. should commit suicide. He provided, therefore, ropes of purple and gold intertwisted, that he might hang himself imperatorially. He provided golden swords, that he might run himself through as became Cæsar. He had poisons enclosed in jewels, that he might drink his farewell beeltaps, if drink he must, in a princely style. Other modes of august death he had prepared. Unfortunately all were unavailing, for he was murdered and dragged through the common sewers by ropes, without either purple or gold in their base composition. The poor fellow has been sadly abused in history; but, after all, he was a mere boy, and as mad as a March hare.
