THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



suicide as a great sin, and in some countries (such as 

 England) the attempt is punished by law. In the Middle 

 Ages, when a hundred thousand men were burned alive 

 for heresy or witchcraft, suicides were punished by a 

 disgraceful burial. As Schopenhauer says: "Clearly 

 there is nothing in the world to which a man has a 

 plainer right than his own life and person. It is simply 

 ridiculous for criminal justice to deal with suicide." 

 The advance of embryology in the last thirty years has 

 made it clear that the individual life of a man (and all 

 other vertebrates) begins at the moment when the male 

 sperm-cell and the maternal ovum coalesce. In this 

 blind chance plays an important part, as in so many 

 other important aspects of life — taking "chance" in the 

 scientific sense, which I have explained in chapter xiv. of 

 the Riddle. Hence, the real cause of personal existence 

 is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of 

 one's earthly parents; very often this consequence of the 

 act of love has been anything but desired. If, then, the 

 circumstances of life come to press too hard on the poor 

 being who has thus developed, without any fault of his, 

 from the fertilized ovum — if, instead of the hoped-for 

 good, there come only care and need, sickness and misery 

 of every kind — he has the unquestionable right to put an 

 end to his sufferings by death. Every religion assents to 

 this under certain conditions, even Christianity when it 

 says: "If thine eye scandalize thee, cast it from thee." 

 It is true that the conventional morality condemns 

 suicide under any circumstances; but the reasons it 

 alleges are ridiculously slight, and are not improved by 

 having the mantle of religion wrapped about them. 



The voluntary death by which a man puts an end to 

 intolerable suffering is really an act of redemption. We 

 should, therefore, describe it as self -redemption, and look 

 on it with Christian sympathy, not brand it pharisaically 

 as "self-murder." As a fact, this contemptuous phrase 



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