SUICIDK FROM A LEGAL POINT OF VIEW. 20I 



law is that neither suicide nor attempted suicide is a crime in 

 this country. 



It is interesting to note that in ancient times it was the cus- 

 tom in Holland, as comparatively recently in England, to con- 

 fiscate the goods and maltreat the body of the person who com- 

 mitted suicide. But in Holland the corpses were merely drawn 

 on a hurdle and hung on a gallows. There do not seem to have 

 been any special precautions against the ghost of the deceased. 



It would be interesting to know whether native custom in 

 South Africa treats suicide as a crime. Suicide is so rare 

 amongst the natives of South Africa that it is possible that cus- 

 tom does not deal with the subject. 



Thus far I have considered suicide from a legal point of 

 view. It will generally be agreed that suicide ought not to be 

 treated as a crime in law. The object of the criminal law is to 

 protect individuals from one another, not from themselves. 

 A man may mutilate himself without the law interfering. He 

 may get as drunk as he likes so long as he does not disturb other 

 people. In addition to this, the law has no means, of punishing 

 a successful suicide. At the same time, an attempted suicide 

 might be punishable when it is an offence against public decency. 

 We do not want to have persons throwing themselves from public 

 monuments or cutting their throats in the street. And there 

 should be some means of preventing this. 



I have now to consider suicide more from the ethical or 

 moral point of view. 



There has never been that unanimity with regarci to the 

 moral aspect of suicide that there has been with regard to such 

 acts as homicide, robbery, and so forth. In the East, in any 

 case in China and Japan, suicide does not appear to be regarded 

 as a wrong act. In India the practice of " suttee " or widows 

 killing themselves on the death of their husbands was looked 

 upon as meritorious. In Europe, opinion has varied greatly. 

 In the first few centuries of the Christian era there was a great 

 development of pagan morality in Stoicism. The teachings of 

 two great representatives of Stoicism — Epictetus and Marcus 

 Aurelius — are sources of comfort and strength to many in the 

 present day. They present a lofty morality which is not 

 coloured by the other-worldliness of earlv Christian teachings. 

 The Stoics considered suicide to be justified in certain cases. 

 Epictetus imagines those he is teaching coming to him and ask- 

 ing him whether they may not leave a worthless world of 

 materialistic wants, a world of robbers and courts of justice and 

 tyrants, and his answer is : " Friends, wait for God ; when He 

 shall give the signal and release you from this service, then go 

 to Him ; but for the present endure to dwell in this place where 

 He has put you ; short, indeed, is this time of your dwelling here, 

 and easy to bear for those who are so disposed. For what tyrant, 

 or what thief, or what courts of justice are formidable to those 



