n such matters.

[Footnote 1: See my treatise on the _Foundation of Morals_, sec. 5.]

[Footnote 2: _Essays on Suicide_ and the _Immortality of the Soul_, by
the late David Hume, Basle, 1799, sold by James Decker.]

In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason existing
against suicide on the score of mortality. It is this: that suicide
thwarts the attainment of the highest moral aim by the fact that, for
a real release from this world of misery, it substitutes one that is
merely apparent. But from a _mistake_ to a _crime_ is a far cry; and
it is as a crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard
suicide.

The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering--_the
Cross_--is the real end and object of life. Hence Christianity
condemns suicide as thwarting this end; whilst the ancient world,
taking a lower point of view, held it in approval, nay, in honor.[1]
But if that is to be accounted a valid reason against suicide, it
involves the recognition of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid
only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted
by moral philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high standpoint,
there is no tenable reason left, on the score of morality, for
condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and zeal with which the
clergy of monotheistic religions attack suicide is not supported
either by any passages in the Bible or by any considerations of
weight; so that it looks as though they must have some secret reason
for their contention. May it not be this--that the voluntary surrender
of life is a bad compliment for him who said that _all things were
very good_? If this is so, it offers another instance of the crass
optimism of these religions,--denouncing suicide to escape being
denounced by it.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer refers to _Die Welt
als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. i., sec. 69, where the reader may find
the same argument stated at somewhat greater length. According to
Schopenhauer, moral freedom--the highest ethical aim--is to be
obtained only by a denial of the will to live. Far from being a
denial, suicide is an emphatic assertion of this will. For it is in
fleeing from the pleasures, not from the sufferings of life, that this
denial consists. When a man destroys his existence as an individual,
he is not by any means destroying his will to live. On the contrary,
he would like to live if he could do so with satisfaction