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or deed, is displeasing to God, is sinful. Whatever is not sinful, is pure, holy, just, and right, terms which, in mystical phraseology, are equivalents.

Even suicide, being liable to the same mystical objection above stated, has been denounced by many mystical moralists, under the name of self-murder, as one of the greatest of sins; a denunciation in which all the mystical moralists of the Christian school have united; though many of them, out of deference to forensic morality, have endeavoured to maintain, in the very teeth of their own principles, the lawfulness of war, of capital punishments, and of homicide in self-defence.

6. Forensic morals, though condemning homicide. as generally wrong, have yet admitted many cases in which it becomes permissible, and even praiseworthy. Homicide in self-defence has been esteemed permissible for the reason, that benevolence is naturally extinguished and malevolence excited, towards the man who threatens us with the pain of death, or, indeed, with any other grievous pain.

7. Indeed the pain excited by the apprehension of death, produces, in general, such a total extinguishment of the sentiment of benevolence, that to save one's life even by sacrificing the life of an innocent person, as when two drowning men struggle together for a plank, - does not indicate any extraordinary deficiency of moral sentiment, and is, therefore, regarded in many cases as permissible.

8. Even the sentiment of benevolence itself may prompt me to commit homicide, when that homicide is necessary to the protection of those I love, my

parents or children or near relatives or friends or fellow-citizens; and hence homicide under these circumstances, may even assume a praiseworthy character, may be regarded as a beneficial and meritorious act. Homicide in war, and public executions, stand precisely upon this ground.

9. What are called the Laws of War, at least those among them which tend to diminish its horrors, grow, for the most part, out of the sentiment of benevolence. So long as the enemy maintains a threaténing aspect and position, my duty towards my family and my country requires me to use my best efforts for his destruction. But when he is humbled, discomforted, subdued, and no longer dangerous, to put him to death would be a pure, gratuitous cruelty.

Some other of these laws of war, such as that, for instance, which forbids the use of poisoned weapons, originated in the peculiar character which war assumed in modern Europe; it having become an occupation and, as it were, a sort of sport and pastime for the nobility; so that the field of battle came to resemble, in some respects, the lists of chivalry. During the wars of the French Revolution, which were wars of feeling, not of amusement, many of these carpet regulations were disregarded or set aside. But though the atrocities of those wars were very much cried out against, they presented no instances of deliberate, unprovoked, cold-blooded cruelty, like the desolation of the Palatinate by the orders of Louis the Fourteenth.

10. In order to understand the strange contradictions of opinion which exist throughout Christen

dom, on the subject of duelling, as well as upon several other points of morals, it is necessary to consider that although the mystical theory of morals — according to which killing in a duel is one of the most aggravated kinds of murder - is preached by all the priests, and is taught in all the schools, yet there has always existed among the upper classes of society a traditional code of forensic morality, called, by way of distinction, the Law of Honor.

This modern code of forensic morals, this Law of Honor, consisted originally of a few maxims and practices common for the most part to all rude and warlike nations, which the conquerors of the Roman Empire brought with them from the woods of Germany. When literature began to dawn once more, the code of honor was gradually improved by maxims derived from the schools of the ancient philosophers, Stoic and Epicurean; and in still later times, it has been refined and purified by the labor of many enlightened men of the world, and of several pro-found philosophers.

This Law of Honor, this current forensic system of morality, on several points, is directly at war with the Christian mystic code. Persons of the upper classes are taught the mystic code of morals at school and church, and the code of honor at home and in society; and hence results, in many cases, a strangeconfusion and inconsistency of thought and action. Persons of the lower class, till within a short period, were only instructed in the mystical code, which inculcated obedience, humility, contentedness, and hard labor, as the special duties of that lower class.

But as within the last century the distinction of ranks has been rapidly breaking up throughout Christendom, and knowledge has been gradually equalized, the Law of Honor, or the modern forensic code of morals, has obtained a more general circulation; and notwithstanding the vast efforts, within the last fifty years, of the supporters of mysticism, forensic notions of morality have constantly continued to gain a wider currency, and acceptance.

11. According to the code of honor, there are certain cases in which it is a duty to accept, and even to send, a challenge; and if homicide ensue, it is held to be justifiable. Duelling, by those who defend it, is put upon the same ground with the infliction of capital punishments. It is alleged that the duellest, like the magistrate, if he inflict an evil upon a single individual, confers, at the same time, a benefit upon society; and a benefit which is the more meritorious, because he risks his life to confer it. Duelling, in fact, originated in the neglect of the laws to provide proper punishments for insults; so that insulted parties were obliged to take the law into their own hands; and the true and only effectual means of suppressing it, is, to supply that deficiency of the laws.*

12. With respect to suicide, which may be defined to be the voluntary aiding and abetting in one's own death, there are four several and distinct causes

* Bentham is the only author who has treated the subject of duelling with any knowledge of human nature, or in a manner at all satisfactory. See "Bentham's Theory of Legislation," Vol. II. Part II. ch. 14. Of Honorary Satisfaction.

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from which it may spring; and accordingly as it is produced by one or the other of those causes, it is regarded, in forensic systems of morals, as indifferent, as wrong, as meritorious, as a duty.

First. Suicide is often caused by the disease called melancholy. This is a disorder of the nervous system which destroys all capacity for pleasure, shutting the door even against Hope, a pleasure that often suffices to supply the place of all others. ` Under the torture of this disease, even if it be not attended, as often is the case, by a partial overturn of the intellect, moral obligation loses all its force; and the unhappy sufferer is often driven to seek deliverance by suicide. No enlightened forensic moralist holds men to strict moral responsibility for acts performed under the influence of this disease, to which persons of excessive sensibility, and, therefore, possessing a peculiar delicacy of moral sentiment, are specially liable.*

Second. Suicide may originate in terror, in despondency, in what is usually called weakness of mind, a want of courage, fortitude, confidence, and resolution to meet and encounter the usual evils of life. In that case, it is regarded as wrong, because he who commits it, is looked upon as shrinking, in a cowardly manner, from the discharge of

* The tragedy of "Hamlet" is a most masterly exhibition of the power of melancholy to disorder the intellect, and to destroy the force of the warmest affections, even of love itself. Filial affection, strengthened by habit, alone remains too powerful for it. Goethe was the first who made this criticism; its obvious justice has caused it to be universally assented to.

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