heir innocent children.
This was not cowardice.

Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their
property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose
proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of
frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in
heart--the light fading from their lives--seek the refuge of death.
Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways--who mangle their
throats with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take
poisons that torture like the rack--such persons must be insane. But
those who take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and
against, and who decide that death is best--the only good--and then
resort to reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full
possession of their minds.

Life is not the same to all--to some a blessing, to some a curse, to
some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
with the keenest joy, and some with indifference.

Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number
of suicides. The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay
the hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by
natural death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will
cause such believers to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is
no fear of the future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep,
men have less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other hand,
orthodox religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused
parents to murder their children and many thousands to destroy
themselves and others.

It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill
themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is
forgotten, "God" and hell are out of their minds. I am satisfied that
many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of
insanity, and many are perfectly sane.

The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is
cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful
suicides. When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so
persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man? A man
seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take
extra pains and precautions to make death certain.

This