he is not hanged, for he has not damaged or endangered any other
individual's property, and the principle of revenge, upon which all
punishment is founded, has not been aroused. Similar to such a case is
that of the man who, without any family ties, commits suicide; for
example, were I to do the thing this evening, who would have a right to
call me to account? I am alone in the world, have no family to support,
and, so far from damaging any one, should even benefit my heir by my
accelerated death. However, I am no advocate for suicide under any
circumstances; there is something undignified in it, unheroic,
un-Germanic. But if you must commit suicide--and there is no knowing to
what people may be brought--always contrive to do it as decorously as
possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be
lost sight of. I remember a female Quaker who committed suicide by
cutting her throat, but she did it decorously and decently: kneeling down
over a pail, so that not one drop fell upon the floor; thus exhibiting in
her last act that nice sense of neatness for which Quakers are
distinguished. I have always had a respect for that woman's memory.'

And here, filling his pipe from the canister, and lighting it at the
taper, he recommenced smoking calmly and sedately.

'But is not suicide forbidden in the Bible?' the youth demanded.

'Why, no; but what though it were!--the Bible is a respectable book, but
I should hardly call it one whose philosophy is of the soundest. I have
said that it is a respectable book; I mean respectable from its
antiquity, and from containing, as Herder says, "the earliest records of
the human race," though those records are far from being dispassionately
written, on which account they are of less value than they otherwise
might have been. There is too much passion in the Bible, too much
violence; now, to come to all truth, especially historic truth, requires
cool dispassionate investigation, for which the Jews do not appear to
have ever been famous. We are ourselves not famous for it, for we are a
passionate people; the Germans are not--they are not a passionate
people--a people celebrated for their oaths; we are. The Germans have
many excellent historic writers, we . . . 'tis true we have Gibbon. . . .
You have been reading Gibbon--what do you think of him?'

'I think him a very wonderful writer.'

'He is a wonderful writer--one _sui generis_--uniting the perspicuity of
t