th more readily cured
than those of the body? I scarcely think so, to this day. Nor do I know
which is the more craven soul--he who hopes even when hope is no longer
possible, or he who despairs. Death is the natural termination of a
physical malady, and it seemed to me that suicide was the final crisis
in the sufferings of a mind diseased, for it was in the power of the
will to end them when reason showed that death was preferable to
life. So it is not the pistol, but a thought that puts an end to our
existence. Again, when fate may suddenly lay us low in the midst of a
happy life, can we be blamed for ourselves refusing to bear a life of
misery?

"But my reflections during that time of mourning turned on loftier
themes. The grandeur of pagan philosophy attracted me, and for a while
I became a convert. In my efforts to discover new rights for man, I
thought that with the aid of modern thought I could penetrate further
into the questions to which those old-world systems of philosophy had
furnished solutions.

"Epicurus permitted suicide. Was it not the natural outcome of his
system of ethics? The gratification of the senses was to be obtained at
any cost; and when this became impossible, the easiest and best course
was for the animate being to return to the repose of inanimate nature.
Happiness, or the hope of happiness, was the one end for which man
existed, for one who suffered, and who suffered without hope, death
ceased to be an evil, and became a good, and suicide became a final act
of wisdom. This act Epicurus neither blamed nor praised; he was content
to say as he poured a libation to Bacchus, '_As for death, there is
nothing in death to move our laughter or our tears._'

"With a loftier morality than that of the Epicureans, and a sterner
sense of man's duties, Zeno and the Stoic philosophers prescribed
suicide in certain cases to their followers. They reasoned thus: Man
differs from the brute in that he has the sovereign right to dispose of
his person; take away this power of life and death over himself and
he becomes the plaything of fate, the slave of other men. Rightly
understood, this power of life and death is a sufficient counterpoise
for all the ills of life; the same power when conferred upon another,
upon his fellow-man, leads to tyranny of every kind. Man has no power
whatever unless he has unlimited freedom of action. Suppose that he has
been guilty of some irreparable error, from the shameful cons