ctity of life; no social stigma and consequent suffering were
brought on the family of the suicide. Stoic and Epicurean philosophers
alike upheld it as a lawful remedy against the pangs of disease, the
dotage of old age, or the caprices of a tyrant. Every man might, they
contended, choose his own route on the last great journey, and sleep well,
when he grew wearied out with life's fitful fever. The door was always
open (said Epictetus) when the play palled on the senses. You should
quit the stage with dignity, nor drain the flask to the dregs. Some
philosophers, it is true, protested against it as a mere device of
cowardice to avoid pain, and as a failure in our duties as good citizens.
Cicero, in one of his latest works, again quotes with approval the opinion
of Pythagoras, that "no man should abandon his post in life without the
orders of the Great Commander". But at Rome suicide had been glorified by
a long roll of illustrious names, and the protest was made in vain.

But why, continues Cicero, why add to the miseries of life by brooding
over death? Is life to any of us such unmixed pleasure even while it
lasts? Which of us can tell whether he be taken away from good or from
evil? As our birth is but "a sleep and a forgetting", so our death may be
but a second sleep, as lasting as Endymion's. Why then call it wretched,
even if we die before our natural time? Nature has lent us life, without
fixing the day of payment; and uncertainty is one of the conditions of its
tenure. Compare our longest life with eternity, and it is as short-lived
as that of those ephemeral insects whose life is measured by a summer day;
and "who, when the sun sets, have reached old age".

Let us, then, base our happiness on strength of mind, on a contempt of
earthly pleasures, and on the strict observance of virtue. Let us recall
the last noble words of Socrates to his judges. "The death", said he, "to
which you condemn me, I count a gain rather than a loss. Either it is
a dreamless sleep that knows no waking, or it carries me where I may
converse with the spirits of the illustrious dead. _I_ go to death,
_you_ to life; but which of us is going the better way, God only
knows".

No man, then, dies too soon who has run a course of perfect virtue; for
glory follows like a shadow in the wake of such a life. Welcome death,
therefore, as a blessed deliverance from evil, sent by the special favour
of the gods, who thus bring us safely across a sea of