TOYING WITH SUICIDE.
WE regret to see that the Daily Chronicle has been opening its columns to a correspondence on the subject of suicide, in which great prominence has been given to letters not only affirming the right of suicide, but even proposing the deliberate sanction of the State to the institu- tion of "lethal" chambers which may provide painless exits from life for those who have made up their minds that they can no longer endure its conditions. The Daily Chronicle itself, however, we are happy to see, is opposed to any such attempt to smooth the path for suicide. The occasion of the correspondence was the letter written to the Daily Chronicle by the suicide of last week, Mr. Ernest James Clark, who ,based his argument for suicide frankly on the absolute break- down of that faith in Providence which has been, and will continue to be, the greatest barrier to the free exercise of private judgment in a practical decision of this kind. Curiously enough, those who venture to praise Mr. Ernest Clark most warmly for asserting his right to put an end to his life, do not follow him in frankly denouncing the faith in Providence, a course which they seem to think would not strengthen their plea. The writer indeed,—Mr•. William Archer,—who demanded the institution of a "lethal chamber" where men might procure an easy death with all the sanctions of the law, professes to combine an almost passionate admiration of the sentiment of Dryden's con- demnation of suicide, with an equally passionate admiration of Mr. Ernest Clark's defence of it. He quotes the speech of Dryden's Don Sebastian :— Death may be called in vain, and cannot come, Nor has a Christian privilege to die. Brutus and Cato might discharge their souls And give 'em furlough for another world! But we like sentries are obliged to stand
In starless nights, and wait the appointed hour."
And he goes on :—" There I are not those last lines beautiful? They move me like a great Handelian melody. I cannot transcribe them without tears. And for my part, indeed, I most potently believe the sentiment they express, only I hold that Ernest Clark awaited the appointed hour no less than Methuselah or M. Chevreuil." Well, if he did, "the appointed hour" means the hour he appointed for himself, which de- prives Dryden's lines of all their meaning. What this gentle- man seems to desire is to combine the sublime emotion of 'standing like a sentry in a starless night to await the appointed hour, and the comfortable consciousness that if the waiting turns out to be too dismal and too tedious, ho may desert his post at his own discretion and appoint his own hour for doing so. He explains very carefully that unless he feels his own way "into the night" always open to him, he should be as rebellious under the prospect of having to endure what he regards as unendurable, as he would be in a theatre from which there are not plenty of easy exits in case of fire,—and this, we submit, is not precisely the proper attitude of mind for a sentry on duty. Mr. William Archer appears to think that if you can only shed tears over the austere duties which you have undertaken as sentry, and yet reserve the right to run away at pleasure, you may combine Stoicism and Epicureanism in the most delight- ful fashion, instead of simply sinking the Stoic in the Epicurean. But assuredly, as Dryden said, that logical feat is not possible to a Christian,—who believes himself posted by a higher authority than his own at a post whence his own exercise of private judgment can never release him.
However, as we are clearly unable to require that every one who in his heart rejects the doctrine of a divine Providence over man, should act as if he believed what he does not believe, on what ground can we resist Mr. William Archer's proposed provision for the wishes of those who ask State sanction for an easy mode of death when they no longer feel able to fight the battle of life P We should reply,—on precisely the same kind of ground on which we punish the holding out of temptations to sins which we nevertheless do not and cannot compel the English people to treat as sins, though we discourage them with all the energy of democratic displeasure. For example, we no longer hesitate to put every kind of obstruction in the way of drunkenness, though we do not and cannot require a man who asserts his own right to get intoxicated if he pleases, without annoying his fellow-citizens, to recant formally that most unwholesome and unmanly profession of faith. We do all in our power to remove temptations to vice of any kind from the path of the young, though we cannot pretend to reach and punish those secret thoughts which relax the moral energy of the soul and multiply the occasions of vice. Every wholesome society does what it can to popularise a standard of manly citizenship which is directly opposed to selfishness, indolence, and dissipa- tion. Though we no longer insist on the profession of a sober and stimulating moral and religious creed, we accumulate all the discouragements we can upon that practical conduct which relaxes the fibre of human energy and tends to reduce men to helpless dependence on each other. Any mode of life which either leads the young astray or throws the old on the charitable resources of their fellow-creatures, we treat as a mischief to the well-being of the State, and we do all in our power to disparage and suppress it. Now, is it not as certain as anything can be, that to put a premium on im- patience, restlessness, despair, to encourage men to think that they are not bound to fight the miseries and griefs of life with all the energy that they can summon up, does undermine the social virtues at their very foundation P What is the general effect of a poor and spiritless despondency such as Mr. Ernest Clark expressed in his dying letter to the Daily Chronicle ? Is it not to foster all the feeble and fibreless sen- timents of the human heart ? Does it not generate the idea that there is something fastidious and noble in finding life altogether too laborious, and being quite willing to let others suffer rather than consenting to suffer yourself P Did not Mr. Ernest Clark himself apologise to the girl to whom he professed to be warmly attached for putting her to the pain of hearing of his suicide P Can anything more contagious be imagined than this nerveless sinking under the insidious spirit of doubt, this setting an example of cowardice and ignoble shrinking from the thorns of life P We may depend upon it that the first public acknowledgment of the right of men to slink out of life as painlessly as possible, would mean a very great descent in the standard of courage and manliness throughout the whole o our society. It would not only mark a complete surrender of any heroic ideal of life, but would cause a sudden expansion of all the namby-pamby sentimentalities which Mr. William Archer takes under the wing of his tearful poetic sympathy. This weakly pessimism, this cowardly fastidiousness, this moaning and groaning because, as Mr. Ernest Clark said, we were not asked when we were as yet non-existent whether or not we wished to exist,—as if a nonentity could have a wish at all,—as if character must not necessarily precede the formation of anything like an ideal of life,—simply means the growth of all the most peevish and wilful and capricious elements in human nature, the multiplication of which would soon render human society an intolerable waste. The character which in all ages men have admired most, is the character which has been formed by bearing willingly, and overcoming, ills which it has not only done less than other characters to deserve, but much more than other characters to remove. It is perfectly true that no one can form such a character in its highest perfection without accepting heartily that trust in Providence which persons who cry out for a comfortable " lethal chamber " in which they may escape from life, treat as a pure superstition. But that is only an argument against regarding the belief in Providence,—the belief in the duty of patience, and fortitude and faith and hope, which depends on trust in Providence,— as the superstition which these superfine creatures deem it. Surely it cannot be the finest mould of character which is formed by accepting wholesale a great mass of groundless fables A Yet unquestionably the character which struggles most gallantly against both those hardships which beset itself and also those which beset the creatures by whom it is sur- rounded, is the character which does believe implicitly in the divine'purpose of suffering and the divine duty of faith, courage, and resignation. This trifling with suicide, this demand for easy modes of death, is nothing but a sign of the collapse of the higher manliness and courage. If this sensitive shrinking from the problems which divine Providence has set us, should ever really grow upon us, we may be quite sure that the stamina of our race is disappearing, and that we are sinking into the decay of an exhausted stock. There is no better test of a true creed, than the power it gives us to endure hardship of every kind, without the loss of faith and hope and love.
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