=133. Suicide.--J. J. Rousseau and Kant.=--The question of suicide was treated with great ability by J. J. Rousseau in one of his most celebrated works. He put into the mouth of two personages, on the one side, the apology for, and on the other, the condemnation of suicide. We will not cite here these two pieces, the eloquence of which is somewhat declamatory, but we will give an abstract of the principal arguments presented on each side in favor of its own position. _Arguments in favor of suicide._--1. It is said that life is not our own because it was given us.--Not so, for, just because it was given us, is it our own. God has given us arms, and yet we allow them to be cut off when necessary. 2. Man, it is said, is a soldier on sentry on earth: he should not leave his post without orders.--So be it; but misfortune is precisely that order which informs me that I have nothing more to do here below. 3. Suicide, it is said again, is rebellion against Providence.--But how? it is not to escape its laws one puts an end to one's life; it is to execute them the better: in whatever place the soul may be, it will always be under God's government. 4. "If thy slave attempted to kill himself," says Socrates to Cebes in the _Phædo_, "wouldst thou not punish him for trying unjustly to deprive thee of thy property?"--Good Socrates, what sayest thou? Does one no longer belong to God when dead? Thou art quite wrong; thou shouldst have said: "If thou puttest on thy slave a garment which is in his way in the service he owes thee, wouldst thou punish him for laying this garment aside in order the better to serve thee?" 5. It is said that life is never an evil.--Yet has nature implanted in us so great a horror of death that life to certain beings must surely be an evil, since they resolve to renounce it. 6. It is said that suicide is a cowardice.--How many cowards, then, among the ancients! Arria, Eponina, Lucretia, Brutus, Cato! Certainly there is courage in suffering the evils one cannot avoid; but it were insanity to suffer voluntarily those from which one can free himself. 7. There are unquestionably duties that should attach us to life.--But he who is a burden to every one, and of no use to himself, why should he not have a right to quit a place where his complaints are importunate and his sufferings useless? 8. Why should it be allowable to get cured of the gout and not of life? If we consider the will of God, what evil is there for us to combat, that he has not himself sent us? Are we not permitted, then, to change the nature of any thing because all that is, is as he wished it? 9. "Thou shall not kill," says the Decalogue.--But if this commandment is to be taken literally, one should kill neither criminals nor enemies. Next comes the answer of my lord Edward, namely, J. J. Rousseau: