PART FOURTH. PERSONAL DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS, OR THE DUTIES OF MEN TO THEMSELVES. OUR duties to ourselves, well denominated by an English writer, "personal morality,' may be comprised under seven divisions. I. The preservation of life and health, including a discussion of suicide. II. The improvement of the corporeal faculties. III. Cultivation of the powers of the mind generally, including discipline of the temper and passions, and attention to manners and personal habits. IV. Cultivation of a strong, delicate, and permanent sense of duty. V. Cultivating personal religion, and the personal virtues. VI. Cultivating a delicate sense of honor. VII. Guarding ourselves against prejudices, antipathies, prepossessions, &c. CHAPTER I. THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE AND HEALTH, INCLUDING A DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE. If there is any difficulty in putting our duty to preserve life and health beyond all controversy, it arises from its being so plain, that there is no medium of proof by which to make it more manifest. The Christian religion looks upon all our capacities of improvement and usefulness, as so many talents intrusted to our administration, and for the use of which we are to be held responsible. And that our life is the talent of superlative value, * Estlin's Lectures on Moral Philosophy, No. VII. Matt. xxv. 14-30; Luke xix. 12 - 27. when compared with all others committed to us, is a position too manifest to require illustration, much less, argument. Life and health, then, still more than the other talents which we enjoy, are to be regarded as treasures intrusted to our keeping by the Almighty, to be used for our own good and the good of our fellow men. By the duty of preserving life and health, therefore, I mean much more than abstaining from positive and known injury to either. Health may be ruined, and even life may be lost, by neglect as well as by positive injury. Not only so; a person may pursue a course, undeniably calculated to impair his health and shorten his life. Moreover, the duty to preserve life and health includes the duty of using the means of preserving them, such as temperance, exercise, cheerfulness of mind, and whatever else conduces to prolong life and preserve health. On this subject, I may quote the advice of Cicero, which seems to me to comprise the substance of entire volumes. "Health is preserved," says he, "by a knowledge of one's constitution (notitiâ sui corporis), and by observing what things and circumstances benefit, and what injure it, by temperance and moderation in meats and drinks, by forbearance and abstinence from hurtful pleasures and every kind of excess; and, when all these means fail, by the use of medicine and the skill of physicians. This duty, imperative on all men, to preserve life and health, and to use all the means known to conduce to this end, enables me to approach, with advantage, the discussion of the difficult and important subject of suicide, which was esteemed proper, lawful, and even heroic, by the ancient sect of the Stoics; and has sometimes been defended, as well as frequently practised, in modern times. Dr. Smith affirms, that the lawfulness and propriety of suicide was a doctrine common to all the sects of ancient philosophers; and he has ingeniously, if not satisfactorily, traced the prevalence of this doctrine among the Greeks, to the habitual state of public affairs in that country. It is true that the case of Cato, called by Dr. Smith, "the venerable martyr of the republican party," was excused (not commended, as he * De Officiis, Lib. II. c. 24. Theory of Moral Sentiments, Vol. II. pp. 78–80. says,) by Cicero himself, who, though substantially (potissimum) a Stoic in his moral principles, was manifestly against suicide generally. Still it is matter of just regret, that this great philosopher should in any case, or in any degree, have given countenance to the crime of suicide. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the most illustrious of all the philosophers of antiquity, not only gave no countenance to suicide, but gave their voice decisively against it. And this single fact must very much qualify, if it does not indeed destroy, Dr. Smith's assertion, that the lawfulness of suicide was a doctrine common to all the ancient sects. Indeed, I may well ask every man acquainted with ancient authors, and accustomed to form an estimate of ancient opinions, What is the ancient doctrine or opinion worth, against which Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle take their stand? Reinhard † has expanded, illustrated, and enforced the reasoning of Socrates and Plato against suicide, in the copious, lucid, and persuasive style in which he has treated so many other subjects, and has shown, that the voice of philosophy and natural religion give no countenance to, and make no apology for, this crime. The New Testament nowhere contains a positive prohibition of suicide; and from this it has sometimes been supposed, that Christianity does not regard it as an offence against religion and morals. To this, various satisfactory replies may be given. If it is one of our highest duties to preserve life and health; to destroy life knowingly and intentionally must be highly criminal. Again; we are forbidden, under the most severe penalties, by the sacred writers, to take away the lives of others; can it be other than a high offence, to take away our own? Moreover, an implication may be, under certain circumstances, scarcely less strong and conclusive than a positive prohibition; and the implication in regard to suicide is as strong and conclusive, as implication can in any case be. -- Thus, human life is represented as a term appointed or pre *De Officiis, Lib. I. c. 2, 31. "De Morte Voluntariâ quid et quam clarè præcipiat Philosophia," contained in his "Opuscula Academica," Vol. I. pp. 67 - 92. See particularly, pp. 67, 73, 87, note. scribed to us; it is a race set before us, it is our course, we have is a course to be finished, to be finished with joy, need of patience, that, after we have done the will of God, (that is, discharged the duties of life so long as God is pleased to continue us in it,) we may receive the promise.* This way of viewing human life, commended to us by St. Paul, seems to me as inconsistent as possible with the doctrine, that we are at liberty to determine the duration of our lives for ourselves. † Again, Christ and his Apostles inculcate no quality so often or so earnestly, as patience under affliction. Now this virtue would have been, in a great measure, superseded, and the exhortations to its practice might have been spared, if the disciples of our Saviour had been at liberty to quit the world, as soon as they grew weary of the ill usage which they received in it. When the afflictions of life pressed severely upon them, they were exhorted to look forward to a "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory," they were to receive them as "chastenings of the Lord," - as intimations of his care and love; - by these and the like reflections and motives, they were to support and improve themselves under their sufferings; but not a hint has escaped them, that they might seek relief in a voluntary death. One text, in particular, strongly combats all impatience under distress, of which that may be supposed the greatest which prompts to suicide, to wit,-"Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." On this text, it may be inquired, 1. Whether a Christian convert, who had been impelled by the continuance and severity of his sufferings to destroy his own life, would not have been thought by the author "to have been weary, to have fainted in his mind," and to have disgraced the example, which is here proposed for the meditation of Christians when in distress? 2. Whether such an act would not have been attended with all the circumstances of mitigation, which can excuse or extenuate suicide at this day? § Further, the conduct of the Apostles, and of the Christians of Heb. xii. 3. * Hebrews xii. 1; 2 Timothy iv. 7; Acts xx. 24; Hebrews x. 36. the Apostolic age, furnishes no obscure indication of their sentiments on this subject. They lived in a confirmed belief of happiness to be enjoyed by them in a future state. In this world every extremity of injury and distress was their allotment. Το die was gain. The change, which death brought with it, was, in their expectation, infinitely beneficial. Yet it never, that we can find, entered into the mind of any one of them, to hasten this desirable change by an act of suicide, from which, it is difficult to say, what motive could have so universally restrained them, except a conviction of unlawfulness in the act. It is, then, equally the sentiment of philosophy and of religion, both natural and revealed, "All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come."+ Indeed, there Particular and We must be still further convinced of the unlawfulness and criminality of suicide, if we bring the practice to the further test of the general consequences which it involves. is no subject in morals, to which the test of general consequences can be more successfully and properly applied. extreme cases of suicide may be imagined, and may arise, of which it would be difficult to assign the particular mischief, or from that consideration alone, to demonstrate the guilt; but this is no more than what is sometimes true of universally acknowledged vices. Possible cases, even of the highest crimes known to the law, might be proposed, which, if they could be detached from the general rule, and governed by their own particular consequences alone, it would be no easy undertaking to prove criminal. When brought to this test, the question is no other than this; May every man who chooses to destroy his life, innocently do so? Limit and discriminate as we please, it will come at last to this question. For, shall we say, that we may commit suicide, when we find that our continuance in life has become useless to mankind? Any one may make himself useless, who pleases; and persons given to melancholy are apt to think themselves useless, when they really are not so. Suppose a law were enacted, allowing each individual to destroy every man he met, whose longer continuance in the world he might judge to be useless; |