=The duty of self-preservation.--Suicide.=--Arguments of Rousseau for and against suicide. The different standpoints from which one may condemn suicide: 1, either as contrary to the duties toward men; 2, or to the duties toward God; 3, or, lastly, to the duties toward ourselves. Kant's fundamental argument against suicide: "Man cannot abdicate his personality as long as he has duties to perform, which is the same as to say, as long as he lives." Case of conscience.--Not to confound suicide with self-sacrifice. Of voluntary mutilations and of the duty to avoid injuring one's health. That this duty should be understood in a wide sense, and not as an encouragement to constant preoccupation about the condition of one's body. Of cleanliness. =Other duties concerning the body.--Temperance.=--Temperance recommended for two reasons: 1, as necessary to health, and consequently as a corollary to the duty of self-preservation; 2, as necessary to human dignity, which, through intemperance, falls below the brute. Of the moderate use of sensual pleasures. That we should elevate them by attaching to them ideas and sentiments. Other virtues: Decency, modesty, propriety, etc. =131. Have we duties toward ourselves?=--This has been disputed, and it seems rather strange that it should have been. No one, say the jurists, binds himself to himself; no one does himself injustice, they say again. In short, man belongs to himself: is not that the first of ownerships, and the basis of all the others? "No," replies Victor Cousin, "from man's being free and belonging to himself, it is not to be concluded that he has all power over himself. From the fact alone that he is endowed with both liberty and intelligence, I, on the contrary, conclude that he cannot, without failing in his duty, degrade his liberty any more than he can degrade his intelligence. Liberty is not only sacred to others; it is so in itself. "This obligation imposed on the moral personality to respect itself, it is not I who established it; I cannot, therefore, destroy it. Is the respect I have for myself founded on one of those arbitrary agreements which cease to be when the two parties freely renounce it? Are the two contracting parties here I and myself? No; there is one of the parties that is not I, namely, humanity itself, the moral personality, the human essence which does not belong to me, which is not my property, which I can no more degrade or wound in myself than I can in others. There is not even any agreement here or contract.