Secondly, the positive definition of the spiritual nature enables us to perceive more distinctly that the physical part is the means and the spiritual part the end, and to draw the necessary consequences. That which is means is not to be cherished if to do so would defeat the end itself; hence the physical life is _not_ to be preserved if by preserving it we deny or defeat the very purpose which the physical part is to serve. So long as men have the tabu feeling about bloodshed, the fact that life ought of right to be taken in certain instances will seem a hopeless contradiction of the general rule against killing. Keeping in mind the spiritual end of existence on the other hand, we affirm unhesitatingly that it is better that a man should die than commit a heinous crime. It was better for the young girl mentioned in a well-known tale, threatened with outrage, and seeing no other possible way of escape, to strangle herself with her own hair rather than submit. According to the opinion of certain scholastic writers on ethics, dishonor resides solely in the consent of the soul, and where this is absent the mere physical infringement cannot leave a moral stain. This is a helpful point of view in regard to the victims of the atrocities of war, the inmates of certain Belgian nunneries, and the hapless objects of unspeakable brutality in certain Polish villages. The anguish of a pure-minded woman who becomes a mother under such circumstances is hardly conceivable. And to discriminate between the infamy done to her and her own unpolluted soul is a plain duty, as well as to relieve the innocent offspring of outrage from any participation in the guilt to which it owes its existence. But the case to which I refer is different. It is one in which the choice remains between voluntary death and submission to intended violation. Submission in such a situation argues a kind of consent, or at least the absence of a sufficient revulsion.