Chapter 32

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 law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and enforced by ignorance and cruelty.

When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of death, why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?

Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world. People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our sufferings and our duties are here. The law of New York about the attempt to commit suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal. Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who have lost all fear of death, care nothing for law and its penalties. Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.

We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of every suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each other. There is no space between--no room for chance. Given a certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary result. If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions. We must, by education, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the value of the average life. We must cultivate the brain and heart--do away with false pride and false modesty. We must become generous enough to help our fellows without degrading them. We must make industry useful work of all kinds--honorable. We must mingle a little affection with our charity--a little fellowship. We should allow those who have sinned to really reform. We should not think only of what the wicked have done, but we should think of what we have wanted to do. People do not hate the sick. Why should they despise the mentally weak--the diseased in brain?

Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances--of conditions--and we do as we must. This great truth should till the heart with pity for the failures of our race.

Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce the suicide; that in old times they buried him where the roads crossed, and drove a stake through his body. They took his property from his children and gave it to the State.

If Christians would only think, they would see the orthodox religion rests upon suicide--that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without suicide the whole world would have been lost.

If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed them to take his life.

If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not say that he committed suicide?

There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God and allowed the Jews to kill Him, then He consented to His own death--refused, though perfectly able, to defend and protect Himself, and was, in fact, a suicide.

We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and women will untie life's knot and seeks the peace of death.

To the hopelessly imprisoned--to the dishonored and despised--to those who have failed, who have no future, no hope--to the abandoned, the broken-hearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and women--how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!

And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome deliverer. Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed long--when we are weary--when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for the cool kisses of the night--when the senses are dull--when the pulse is faint and low--when the mists gather on the mirror of memory--when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived--when the future has but empty hands--death is as welcome as a strain of music.

After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and forever.

The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that so few of the miserable are brave enough to die--that so many are terrified by the "something after death"--by the specters and phantoms of superstition.

Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic snows--how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea--how they linger in famine--how they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope and courage.

But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are disheartened by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and give the earth their blood.

They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or blame--we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.

One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming and loving daughter, committed suicide. He was a man of generous impulses. His heart was loving and tender. He was conscientious, and so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he thought wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let us be merciful in our judgments.

All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances and conditions sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion's storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of insanity--raise their hands against themselves and desperately put out the light of life.

Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If they are insane they should, if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be reasoned with, calmed and assisted.

Ingersoll's Letter, The Right to One's Life Colonel Ingersoll's Eloquent Reply to His Critics

In the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that "under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."

This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and the writers of letters. These people contend that the right of self-destruction does not and can not exist. They insist that life is the gift of God, and that He only has the right to end the days of men; that it is our duty to beat the sorrows that He sends with grateful patience. Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes--worse than the murder of another.

The first question, then, is:

Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?

A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer--his agony is intense--his suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is slowly being taken. Is this the work of the good God? Did the compassionate God create the cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim?

This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his children, his friends or society. Day after day he is rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the brain to sleep. Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it proper for him to take refuge in sleep?

If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes pleasure in the sufferings of men--that He gloats over the agonies of His children. If there be a good God, He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the evils of life.

So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer--a burden to himself and others, useless in every way--has the right to end his pain and pass through happy sleep to dreamless rest.

But those who have answered me would say to this man: "It is your duty to be devoured. The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is the gift of God. You hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it. The cancer is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it with food."

Take another case: A man is on a burning ship; the crew and the rest of the passengers have escaped--gone in the lifeboats--and he is left alone. In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot swim. If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the ship he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.

Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no circumstances a man has the right to take his life, would say to this man on the deck, "Remain where you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly father that you be clothed in flame--that you slowly roast--that your eyes be scorched to blindness and that you die insane with pain. Your life is not your own, only the agony is yours."

I would say to this man: "Do as you wish. If you prefer drowning to burning, leap into the sea. Between inevitable evils you have the right of choice. You can help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by choosing the easier death."

Let us suppose another case.

A man has been captured by savages in central Africa. He is about to be tortured to death. His captors are going to thrust splinters of pure into his flesh and then set them on fire. He watches them as they make the preparations. He knows what they are about to do and what he is about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, of help. He has a vial of poison. He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass beyond their power, leaving to them only the dead body.

Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it until the savages by torture take it? Are the savages the agents of the good God? Are they the servants of the infinite? Is it the duty of this man to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has he no right to defend himself? Is it the will of God that he die by torture? What would any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this? Is there room for discussion?

If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?

Suppose another case. In the good old days, when the inquisition flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends, many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of pain.

Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man who had been convicted of heresy, "lay him upon the floor of a dungeon, secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten trim to the earth so that he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.

Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture had within his hand a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one quick stroke he found the protection of death?

To this question there can be but one answer.

In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have the right to destroy himself. It does not seem possible that the man was under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the ship and perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the church.

If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take their lives, then I was right when I said that "under many circumstances a man has a right to kill himself."

Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical cowards. They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward.

The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die, no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist. The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.

So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a coward, but a reasonable man. It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no physical cowardice.

Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer a coward?

Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is the man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages or "Christians" a coward?

Third, I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that they acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession of their minds.

Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right to take his life, and if, under such circumstances, he does take his life, then it cannot be said that he was insane.

Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it is the greatest of crimes. Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must have been sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal admit that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is incapable of committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who have passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that assertion admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.

They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."

It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to be true: First, that under some circumstances a man has the right to take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a physical coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide were at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.

Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the foundation of the Christian religion.

I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power to protect Himself without injuring His assailants--that having that power it was His duty to use it, and that failing to use it He consented to His own death and was guilty of suicide. To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and atonement are born of a belief in the "fall of man," on account of the sins of our "first parents," and of the declaration that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." The foundation has crumbled. No intelligent person now believes in the "fall of man"--that our first parents were perfect, and that their descendants grew worse and worse, at least until the coming of Christ.

Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage, whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries of suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery, invention, self-sacrifice and thought.

Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest. The idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death that He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the consequences of His own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and natural brain.

In no mythology can anything more monstrously Unbelievable be found.

But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of His times because it was cruel and absurd; if He endeavored to found a religion of kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what He believed to be right and true; He suffered death, then He was a noble man--a benefactor of His race. But if He were God there was no need of this. The Jews did not wish to kill God. If He had only made himself known, all knees would have touched the ground. If He were God it required no heroism to die. He knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of eternal life. If He were God, there was no self-sacrifice. He had no need to suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.

Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from these conclusions--from these arguments--and so, instead of attacking the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.

Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to commit suicide a crime.

It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished--helped rather than imprisoned.

A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of death. She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb and locked in a felon's cell.

To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages would enforce.

Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the hour of death. They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy, surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks, reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that meets the morning.

At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed meet him in heaven.

But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the creed of the church in power could not die in peace. God would see to it that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of fear--that with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry for pardon.

This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering me, declare that the atheists, the free-thinkers, have no fear of death--that to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said that infidels believe that death is the end--that it is a dreamless sleep--that it is without pain--that therefore they have no fear, care nothing for gods or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit, nothing for the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a burden they carelessly throw it down.

The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide. This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having forced the clergy to contradict themselves.

Seventh, the clergy take the position that the atheist, the unbeliever, has no standard of morality--that he can have no real conception of right and wrong. They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one to be moral or good unless he believes in some being far above himself.

In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he believes in some being superior to himself.

What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the circumstances. What is the best thing to do under the circumstances? That which will increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least. Happiness, in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral--that which decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral.

It is not hard for an atheist--for an unbeliever--to keep his hands out of the fire. He knows that burning his hands will not increase his well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.