SUICIDE.
WE quoted last week the opinion of a contemporary that Mr. Pigott's suicide went far "to atone for his mani- fold misdeeds ;" and though the meaning may only have been that by throwing the most complete discredit on his testimony, he undid whatever mischief his testimony had done, the remark shows a marvellous indifference to the personal sin of suicide, a complete oblivion of any aspect of this particular act except the aspect which affected its bearing on the Irish question. Is there or is there not a growing tolerance for suicide as an act for which man has the full responsibility, and which he has as much right to choose for himself, after
• full consideration, as he has to choose to emigrate or to • volunteer for an Arctic voyage ? We rather think there is ; and we should not wonder that there should be such growing • tolerance, if it be indeed true that in the better educated .-classes belief in the providence of God,—indeed, any genuine belief in God,—is on the decline. If a blind destiny has brought a man into the world, he may fairly think that he has a right to decline the life that is thus forced upon him by some power for which he can feel no sort of reverence, and to do so at any time at which the burden appears to be more than he can bear. Suppose any one to be really -convinced that God's providence is a fiction, and also that no human being has any just claim on his life, and further, that the life of both soul and body ceases absolutely with death, these assumptions being granted, we „cannot conceive why he should not commit suicide when- ever he is sick of living. Of course, we do not believe • ,that any man ever is really convinced of this. There is -some mysterious hope or dread which haunts the soul even of the most deliberate sceptic, that gives him "pause," as Hamlet says, when he prepares to plunge into the world beyond. But the fainter the general belief in God's providence becomes, the fainter are these warnings against treating our life as a possession which we are at liberty to keep or to cast away at pleasure. And undoubtedly, when public opinion declares that a man could hardly do more "to atone for his manifold misdeeds" than precipitate himself out of life, a great stimulus must be given to the notion that suicide is not a kind of murder at all, not even the least guilty of its forms, but is a legitimate exercise of individual responsi- bility by one who has perhaps as good means of knowing whether his continued existence is desirable for himself and the world or not, as he would have of knowing whether his continued tenure of any official post is desirable for himself and the world, or not. If life is given us by God as the means of education for our characters, it is obvious enough that we are not to choose for ourselves when we will regard that educa- tion as at an end. He who gave us our bodily life as the field for the education of our character, may be trusted to take it away again when the uses of that education are fulfilled. But if that is not so, if our life has emerged from darkness, and is to be again merged in darkness at its close, it is difficult indeed to understand why there should be any more cowardice in saying, To this I am not equal ; it is doing neither me nor any one else any good, so far as I can perceive, and there is no one, so far as I know, fitter to judge the matter than myself,' than there would be in a General officer's saying, This post cannot be held by the force I have under my command; we shall all be cut to pieces if we stay, and therefore I propose to retreat from it while there is yet time.' No doubt the motive of the two retreats is not identical. The retreat of the officer from a post he cannot hold, is intended to save life and to economise the force which is at his country's disposal. And though the retreat of a suicide from life can only at best be intended to save himself pain and to remove a source of per. plenty and embarrassment from the lot of others, yet the latter object, if not as worthy of praise as the former, is at least legiti- mate in its way, where it does not involve any clear abandor- ing of a higher duty; nor does it involve any such abandoning of a higher duty to one who is profoundly convinced that life is not a trust committed to his hands by a divine wisdom, but a labyrinth of misfortune in which he has been involved by the inevitable evolution of a chaotic fate. To Socrates, who held that we had been placed at our post as a sentinel is placed at his by the orders of his General, suicide was an act of cowardice and disobedience; but there is neither cowardice nor disobedience in it to the man who is heartily persuaded,— if any one ever is so persuaded,—that life is a scrape into which he has fallen as a lot falls upon the selected instrument of a group of assassins, and that he has as much right to escape from life when it becomes unendurable, as we have to abdicate official functions in which we have been entangled without our consent and against our better judgment, by the pressure of a momentary emergency.
But to any one who has not this persuasion, to any one who is even so much as doubtful whether life is an education pro- vided for us by infinite wisdom, or a thicket into which we have wandered without guidance and without resource, suicide should surely appear at once an arrogant and imbecile mis- take. It is arrogant, because nothing can be more arrogant for a blind creature who does not know whether he is or is not under the guidance of another's clear vision, than to take for granted that there is no such guidance, and precipi- tate the very destiny that is most dreaded ; and it is imbecile, because it assumes the worse of two alternatives, which must be disastrous, while the other which only might prove to be so, was still left open. If you are being guided and educated by a higher wisdom, you may reap a rich moral harvest out of a submission on behalf of which your own sense of helplessness powerfully pleads. If not, you can obviously reap no gain at all from assuming that the darkness is impenetrable from above as well as from beneath, since docility, even without a teacher, can hardly, except by pare accident, be more injurious to us than self-will in the same predicament. When everything darkens round us, there is a natural fitness in the attitude of humility and submissiveness which witnesses strongly against any daring and high-handed act. To do and dare is appropriate to the zig-zag lightning of genius or inspiration; it is not appropriate to the sense of utter bewilderment and confusion. "In your patience ye shall win your souls," is the lesson appropriate to such a state of mind, even though that lesson only initiates a great moral experiment of which we cannot foresee the issue. And "In your patience ye shall win your souls," is a precept which very strongly and naturally suggests that in our impatience we shall lose them. The man who strikes out wildly in thick darkness must feel that he is playing a mad part. A man who gropes on all sides and waits, must feel that he is playing, to say the very least, the part which nature for the moment imposes upon him, whether that nature be the in- strument of perfect wisdom or not. "Behold, we count them happy which endure," awakens some echo in the heart of the most miserable sufferer under inevitable anguish ; for he feels that suffering, too, may be a calling, and may breed a wisdom of which he has a dim forecast. But no one has said, in reference to "the pangs, the internal pangs" of inevitable suffering, "Behold, we count them happy which revolt." And if it had been said, it would have carried its own refutation with it, for revolt adds to the poignancy of such suffering instead of relieving it, and turns the dim consciousness of a possible vocation into the moral epilepsy of despair.
And, of course, what applies to a mere doubter whether God's providence rules or not, applies with tenfold force to any one who believes heartily in God, not to speak of revelation. If God appoints us our earthly lot, and hides from us so completely the consequence of putting ourselves to death, that we are simply and completely ignorant of what we choose in choosing self-slaughter, it is simply impossible for one who believes in his providence to prefer the lot over which an impenetrable veil is cast, to the lot of which, even If it seem to be one of pure suffering, we can dimly guess the significance. If God offered us the choice between a prolonged earthly lot and a sudden plunge into the life beyond, he would show us into what kind of life beyond we were electing to pass, instead of merely hiding it from us as a forbidden mystery into the secret of which, until his decree comes, we are not permitted to peer. If a man chooses between staying at home and emigration, he chooses between two classes of duties of which he can compute the probable consequences. If he chooses between staying at home and a perilous Arctic voyage, again he chooses between two classes of duties in either of which he may render eminent services to his fellow-men, and only has to estimate for which of the two classes of services he seems to himself the better fitted. But if he chooses between life and a voluntary death, he chooses between a class of duties and sufferings which he so fat: understands, that he knows in what spirit they ought to be discharged and borne, and a class of duties and sufferings of which he knows nothing at all except that they are not laid before him as an alternative on which his conscience can decide whether he should undertake them or not. A man who voluntarily dashes into the next life without leave, is like a horseman who, out of pure self-will, leaps a wall without being able to conjecture whether or not on the other side there be a precipice or greensward. Professing to be- lieve in God's providence, he yet goes where he cannot even pretend that it guides him, since it gives him no vision of duty beyond, while it does give him a clear vision of duty on the hither side. We refer, now, of course, to the mere theist, the earnest believer in God's providence who is not also a believer in Christ's revelation. To any one who is the latter as well as the former, suicide must be a still more deliberate act of rebellion, since the whole genius of Christ's religion teaches that in willing suffering there is some mysterious virtue, from which, when we are led to it by the providence of God, it is sheer impiety to shrink ; and certainly, if suicide be not a deliberate shrinking from suffering, it is an utterly unin- telligible act, of which no account at all can be given, least of all an account consistent in any fashion with submissiveness to the holy will which, as it has brought us into this world, can alone be safely trusted to sanction our passing out of it.
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