kingdom of heaven. Origen, one of the early Christian fathers, is said to have adopted this course. But no good arguments in favour of it can be drawn from reason or from revelation. And if Self-mutilation cannot be defended on the ground of its tendency to promote the progress of the soul to perfection, still less can it be so when practised for selfish or sordid ends. In the history of Eastern nations, we read that particular places of trust could only be filled by persons who had undergone mutilation. But this is just an example of one vice begetting another. The effeminate and luxurious manners of the East gave rise to jealousy, and jealousy gave rise to the practice alluded to, a practice humiliating and degrading to those who submitted to it, and bringing no security nor comfort to those who enjoined it.

The same practice has also been resorted to in cases in which the voice has been thought to be improved by it, and a greater price got for exercising it. In such cases the mutilation is inflicted at an early age, and not by the party himself. It is a social sin; for no one can have a right to make gain of the limbs or life of another. It has been questioned, however, whether a man may not voluntarily part with what belongs to his bodily frame, with a view to procure gain to himself or to do benefit to another—as by extracting a tooth, or cutting off the hair, to accommodate or adorn some other person. Such things cannot be commended, but must rather be condemned. It is plain, however, that to part with a diseased limb or member of the body may sometimes be a necessary and painful duty. "Immedicabile vulnus ense recidendum, ne pars sincera trahatur.”

2. If Self-mutilation is to be condemned, much more must Suicide or Self-murder be contrary to the duty which a man owes to himself.

As a sin against the State, which has a right to the services of all its members, Suicide has been discouraged and punished by the laws of all nations. But the question here is, whether it is contrary to the duty which a man owes to himself, as charged with the conservation of his bodily life. It may be answered—

(1.) That Suicide is contrary to one of the strongest of our natural desires.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature. It extends beyond animal to all organized existence. The functions of vegetable life have the preservation and continuance of that life for their end. The inferior animals have a natural discernment of the food which is con

venient for them, and reject with unwavering firmness whatever would prove noxious. By a natural antipathy, they flee from their natural enemies, and avoid, with jealous caution, everything that threatens them with danger. They never spontaneously, it has been thought, do anything to shorten or terminate their existence.1 And in the case of human beings, it has been questioned whether Suicide takes place except under the influence of temporary insanity. The love of life appears as early and as strong in man as in the inferior animals; so that Self-murder is in the fullest sense of the word unnatural, contrary to the constitution of human nature, and contrary to the duty which the inheritor of that nature owes to himself.

(2.) Suicide is contrary to the end for which, and the condition under which, life is given.

Man is not born into this mortal life merely to eat and drink, and then lie down like the brutes which perish. He has a work to do, and a time in which to do it. The work is great, the time is short, and he has no right to shorten it. This life is a warfare. In this warfare every man has his post or station, and he is not at liberty to desert it. He is bound by more than military oath to keep it. This view of human life was distinctly taken and strongly exhibited by the ancient moralists. Pythagoras is represented as saying (Cicero, De Senectute), "That no one should depart from his station without the command of his general, that is God." Plato has said (Phœdo), "That in this life we are placed as in a garrison, from which we must not retire nor withdraw ourselves." Cicero (Somnium Scipionis) has eloquently expanded the same sentiment.

On the other hand, both the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools of philosophy furnished their disciples with reasons for the justification of Suicide. Hegesias, surnamed Heσidávaros, or the death-persuader, wrote several books to prove the utter worthlessness and unprofitableness of life; "and so powerful," says Professor Butler (Lectures on Hist. of Phil., vol. i. p. 459), “was the melancholy rhetoric of this advocate of the grave, that an Egyptian king was obliged to prohibit the publication of his discourses." Some Jewish writers repre

1 The case of the viper, which, when surrounded by flames, gradually retires to the centre of the circle, and dies by its own sting, may be a case of unconscious muscular contraction. The case of horses, tyrannized over by other horses, deliberately dashing out their brains against a

tree and the case of the squirrel who dropped into the water to escape from the persecution of other squirrels-may perhaps be accounted for without calling them acts of suicide. (MOORE, Power of the Soul over the Body, pp. 238, 239.)

sent the cases of Samson and of Saul as excusable, or even justifiable. The later Stoics argued that a man was at liberty at any time to terminate his bodily life. Should his lot have been prosperous and happy, "yet if he had become weary of life, and satisfied with the share which he had had in its enjoyments," he was at liberty, like a guest who had been filled, to rise from the well-furnished table which had been spread before him, and make room for others. On the other hand, should a man's lot in life be unhappy—should his body be full of disease and pain, and his mind full of anxiety, and no prospect of relief-why should he not terminate his sufferings by departing from a scene wherein he can no longer take pleasure-as one leaves a house which has been found to be incurably smoky and uncomfortable. But their reasoning on this head was at variance with their principle of living in conformity with the course of nature and the arrangement of Providence; and with the precept of Epictetus, who professed himself ready, under all circumstances, to say, "I am in the station which God has assigned me.' Cicero, notwithstanding his condemnation of Suicide, seems to have thought it excusable in the case of Cato, "who left life rejoicing that he was furnished with a reason sufficient to justify his resigning it." Augustine has expressed himself more guardedly: "Hoc non fecisset nisi victoriam Cæsaris impatientur tulisset." The question remains, Should the success of Cæsar have so fretted him as to lead to such an act ?2

Seneca anticipated his condemnation to death by committing Suicide; but he had previously obtained permission of the Emperor; thus giving a singular illustration of the fear of man, which bringeth a snare, and of the want of that fear of God, which tendeth unto life.

Among the early Christians those persons who exposed themselves to death in their attempts to deface or demolish the idols of the

2 The circumstances attending it have been thrown into the form of a tragedy by Mr. Addison, who has given as much plausibility as they can well receive to the reasonings of Cato. But it became not a man of good sense and good taste thus to wipe the hideous wounds and to garnish the guilty sepulchre of a suicide. And he who had substantially served the cause of piety and virtue by his other writings hould have paused before he lent the aces of his diction to the proud sophisms the Stoic, and gave to them the pervanence and the currency of a public and

popular representation. "I would rather die by the wickedness of another than by my own," was the resolution of one (Darius) whom the sages of Greece and Rome would have called a barbarian; but a resolution which displayed more true wisdom and courage than all the vain-glorious musings and studied preparations of a Cato-a resolution which might have been more consistently embellished by the talents of a Christian author, and, if such things must be, more safely exhibited to the applause of a people calling themselves Christian.

heathens were forbidden to be numbered among the martyrs. And the Circumcelliones, who, out of a desire for martyrdom, would provoke others to kill them, or, being disappointed in that, would do so themselves, were reckoned no better than madmen.

Kant (Metaphys. of Eth., 8vo., Edin. 1836, p. 261) puts the question,-"Can we regard it as a crime on the part of our late great monarch [Frederick II.], that he always bore about with him a poison, probably in order that if he should be taken in war (which he always carried on in person) he might not be compelled to accept conditions of ransom too burdensome to his country?" He also puts the case of a patient feeling decided symptoms of hydrophobia, who declared that, as this complaint was incurable, he would destroy himself, lest he should occasion some disaster to his fellow-men. It is demanded if he was wrong. Arist., Eth., lib. iii. cap. 7; lib. v. cap. 11; Donne, Biathanatos, Lond. 1644; Adams, On Self-Murder, Lond. 1700; Madame de Staël, Reflexions sur le Suicide; Rousseau, New Elöise; Hermann, Disputatio de Autocheira, 4to., Lips. 1809; Stoeudlin, Hist. des Opinions sur le Suicide, 8vo., Goetting. 1824; Tissot, Manie du Suicide, 1840; Hume, Essays on Suicide and Immortality, Lond. 1783; see Life by Barton, vol. ii. p. 13.

As man is to refrain from all attempts to mutilate his bodily frame, or to terminate his bodily life, it follows that he ought to resist all bodily violence when offered by others. According to the law of nature, he has a right to defend himself against all such violence. In defending himself he may do bodily harm to others; but he is justifiable in doing so, when the harm to himself cannot otherwise be prevented. Even although he should take away the life of others in defending his own, he may be free from blame. But the circumstances under which bodily violence may be offered and repelled, are so many and so various, that, in the progress of human society, they speedily come under the cognizance of positive law. And the rights and duties resulting will more properly be considered under the head of Social Ethics.

SECTION II.-Man is bound to promote his Health, and to see that his Body is maintained in a sound and vigorous State, with all its energies duly developed. "No man hateth (or ought to hate) his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it" (or ought to nourish and to cherish it). Ephes. v. 29.

The saying of Pascal is too true,—" In trying to make themselves angels, men have made of themselves brutes." In aiming at an unnatural spirituality they have neglected or afflicted the body. Asceticism is of two kinds-viz., theological and philosophical. Theological asceticism proceeds upon the idea of expiation or atonement; and, regarding the Deity as offended and ready to exact punishment, seeks to appease his anger by voluntarily inflicting bodily pain. Philosophical asceticism seeks to free the soul from the servitude of the body and the degrading influences of external nature, and to raise it to its true destination, by making it superior to the pleasures and the pains of sense. Still, under almost every form of religion and philosophy, the great law of nature, that the health of the body must be cared for, has been acknowledged. The great attention paid all over the East to meats and drinks and divers washings had this in view. The public games and public baths, among the Greeks and Romans, were intended to promote the health and vigour of the body. In the Christian religion, although the contrast between the flesh and the spirit, and the duty of keeping the body under, and bringing it into subjection, are strongly insisted on, still there is nothing to make us indifferent to the preservation of our health. When the body is regarded as the abode and instrument of a mind, furnished with powers so noble, and capable of aspirations so lofty, it demands, and is entitled to, our greatest care. The prayer of the Moralist of antiquity, that he might possess a sound mind in a healthy body-mens sana in corpore sano-comprehends all that constitutes the perfection and happiness of man as a living being. A state of health is in itself a state of enjoyment; and it is necessary as a condition to every other enjoyment. So that man, without any higher motive than mere self-love, should be led to take care of the health of that living body which has been committed to his charge.

But the health of the body is necessary to the soundness and strength of the mind. Ill health may prevent that exercise and