On yet another exciting topic, that of suicide, it will perhaps be salutary to relate one anecdote illustrating the view the reformer took of the matter, now that so many despairing souls have lost the aids and consolations of religious faith in struggling with the difficulties of their life on earth; when followers of the stoical and heroic Zeno are becoming rarer and rarer, and so many young men and women resort to the fumes of charcoal, or to the waters of the nearest river, to put an end to the woes they have not the courage to face. We must premise, however, that there is really far more excuse for an Asiatic to take his own life than for a European, there being nothing unreasonable about it according to the doctrine of Buddha, whose disciples believe firmly in the transmigration of souls. They do not, it is true, profess to know whether, if they commit suicide they will become animals, but they are firmly convinced that they will continue to live, whereas the atheist has faith in nothingness alone. [Illustration: FIG. 31.--A DESPERATE MAN.] In one of his many journeys Confucius and his disciples met a man who was trying to strangle himself with a rope. When asked what his motives were for wishing to commit suicide, he replied that he had been a bad son, a bad father, and a bad citizen. The remorse he felt for the terrible character his self-examination revealed him to be from all these three points of view, had made his life odious to him, and he had come out to a lonely place to put an end to it. Greatly shocked, Confucius reproved him, addressing him in the following terms: "However great the crimes you have committed, the worst of all of them is yielding to despair. All the others may be allowed, but that is irremediable. You have, no doubt, gone astray from the very first steps you took upon earth. You should have begun by being a man of ordinary worth before attempting to distinguish yourself You cannot attain to being an eminent person until you have strictly fulfilled the duty imposed by nature on every human creature. You ought to have begun by being a good son; to love and serve those to whom you owed your being was the most essential of your obligations; you neglected to do so, and from that negligence have resulted all your misfortunes. [Illustration: FIG. 32.--THE TOMB OF CONFUCIUS. (_Univers Pittoresque._)] [Sidenote: SPEECH OF CONFUCIUS]