Harsh words of rebuke, and the threat of severe punishment upon a second attempt--what are they to the wretch weary of life? To some of them the kindest punishment would be to hang them for it.It is something else than punishment that they need.If the comfortable alderman had but "a feeling of their afflictions," felt in himself for a moment how miserable he must be, what a waste of despair must be in his heart, before he would do it himself, before the awful river would appear to him a refuge from the upper air, he would change his tone.I fear he regards suicide chiefly as a burglarious entrance into the premises of the respectable firm of Vension, Port, & Co.'
'But you mustn't be too hard upon him, Falconer; for if his God is his belly, how can he regard suicide as other than the most awful sacrilege?'
'Of course not.His well-fed divinity gives him one great commandment: "Thou shalt love thyself with all thy heart.The great breach is to hurt thyself--worst of all to send thyself away from the land of luncheons and dinners, to the country of thought and vision." But, alas! he does not reflect on the fact that the god Belial does not feed all his votaries; that he has his elect; that the altar of his inner-temple too often smokes with no sacrifice of which his poor meagre priests may partake.They must uphold the Divinity which has been good to them, and not suffer his worship to fall into disrepute.'
'Really, Robert,' said his father, 'I am afraid to think what you will come to.You will end in denying there is a God at all.You don't believe in hell, and now you justify suicide.Really--I must say--to say the least of it--I have not been accustomed to hear such things.'
The poor old man looked feebly righteous at his wicked son.Iverily believe he was concerned for his eternal fate.Falconer gave a pleased glance at me, and for a moment said nothing.Then he began, with a kind of logical composure:
'In the first place, father, I do not believe in such a God as some people say they believe in.Their God is but an idol of the heathen, modified with a few Christian qualities.For hell, I don't believe there is any escape from it but by leaving hellish things behind.For suicide, I do not believe it is wicked because it hurts yourself, but I do believe it is very wicked.I only want to put it on its own right footing.'
'And pray what do you consider its right footing?'
'My dear father, I recognize no duty as owing to a man's self.
There is and can be no such thing.I am and can be under no obligation to myself.The whole thing is a fiction, and of evil invention.It comes from the upper circles of the hell of selfishness.Or, perhaps, it may with some be merely a form of metaphysical mistake; but an untruth it is.Then for the duty we do owe to other people: how can we expect the men or women who have found life to end, as it seems to them, in a dunghill of misery--how can we expect such to understand any obligation to live for the sake of the general others, to no individual of whom, possibly, do they bear an endurable relation? What remains?--The grandest, noblest duty from which all other duty springs: the duty to the possible God.Mind, I say possible God, for I judge it the first of my duties towards my neighbour to regard his duty from his position, not from mine.'
'But,' said I, 'how would you bring that duty to bear on the mind of a suicide?'
'I think some of the tempted could understand it, though I fear not one of those could who judge them hardly, and talk sententiously of the wrong done to a society which has done next to nothing for her, by the poor, starved, refused, husband-tortured wretch perhaps, who hurries at last to the might of the filthy flowing river which, the one thread of hope in the web of despair, crawls through the city of death.What should I say to him? I should say: "God liveth: thou art not thine own but his.Bear thy hunger, thy horror in his name.
I in his name will help thee out of them, as I may.To go before he calleth thee, is to say 'Thou forgettest,' unto him who numbereth the hairs of thy head.Stand out in the cold and the sleet and the hail of this world, O son of man, till thy Father open the door and call thee.Yea, even if thou knowest him not, stand and wait, lest there should be, after all, such a loving and tender one, who, for the sake of a good with which thou wilt be all-content, and without which thou never couldst be content, permits thee there to stand--for a time--long to his sympathizing as well as to thy suffering heart."'
Here Falconer paused, and when he spoke again it was from the ordinary level of conversation.Indeed I fancied that he was a little uncomfortable at the excitement into which his feelings had borne him.
'Not many of them could understand this, I dare say: but I think most of them could feel it without understanding it.Certainly the "belly with good capon lined" will neither understand nor feel it.
Suicide is a sin against God, I repeat, not a crime over which human laws have any hold.In regard to such, man has a duty alone--that, namely, of making it possible for every man to live.
And where the dread of death is not sufficient to deter, what can the threat of punishment do? Or what great thing is gained if it should succeed? What agonies a man must have gone through in whom neither the horror of falling into such a river, nor of the knife in the flesh instinct with life, can extinguish the vague longing to wrap up his weariness in an endless sleep!'
'But,' I remarked, 'you would, I fear, encourage the trade in suicide.Your kindness would be terribly abused.What would you do with the pretended suicides?'
'Whip them, for trifling with and trading upon the feelings of their kind.'
'Then you would drive them to suicide in earnest.'
'Then they might be worth something, which they were not before.'
'We are a great deal too humane for that now-a-days, I fear.We don't like hurting people.'
