may
have lacked moral courage, but not physical. It may be said that some
men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between
two fires--the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they
take the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were, according to
their belief, between two fires--the flames of the fagot that could
burn but for a few moments and the fires of God, that were eternal.
And they chose the flames of the fagot.

Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and
pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the
suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or
that Seneca was. Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for. Cato
was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of
others who felt that they had reached the end--that the journey was
done, the voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain
that the man who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops all
other deeds, that shackles accident and bolts up change," is not
lacking in physical courage.

If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses,
in hospitals, they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the
stains of dishonor, they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this can
be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."

Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He
knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom of
every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he
allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said, "There
is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits
innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in
which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death."
To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.

Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not
only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became
outcasts. If, however, they died before conviction, their children
were saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly
they were not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes, they had
enough of honor, of manhood, left to save t