"It seems absurd," he says, "that man could do himself injury." (_Volenti non fit injuria._[90]) Thus did the stoic regard it as a prerogative of the sage, to be able, quietly and of his own free will, to step out of this life as he would out of a room full of smoke. But this very courage, this strength of soul which enables us to brave death, revealing to us a something man prizes more than life, should have been to him [the stoic] all the greater incentive not to destroy in himself a being endowed with a faculty so great, so superior to all the most powerful of sensuous motives, and consequently not to deprive himself of life. Man cannot abdicate his personality as long as there are duties for him, consequently as long as he lives; and there is contradiction in granting him the right of freeing himself from all obligation--that is to say, acting as freely as if he had no need of any kind of permission. To annihilate in one's own person the subject of morality, is to extirpate from the world as much as possible the existence of morality itself; it is disposing of one's self as of an instrument, for a simply arbitrary end; it is lowering humanity in one's own person. =134. Résumé of the discussion on suicide.=--From the above point of view the sophisms of Saint-Preux in J. J. Rousseau are easily controverted. I can cut my arm off, you say; why can I not destroy my body?--But in destroying a withered or mortified arm, I nowise injure the human personality, which remains within me entire; and, on the contrary, I deliver the moral personality within me of a physical trouble which deprives it of its liberty. I can, you say, avoid pain: no one is obliged to bear a toothache, if he can free himself from it.--Yes, unquestionably; but in finding a remedy for physical pain, instead of wronging the moral personality of man, I free it, on the contrary, of the evils which, in crushing it, tend to debase it. Besides, there are, moreover, pains from which it is not right to free one's self. For example, it is not right to leave the sickbed of one dear to us because his pains are unbearable. But life is full of misery, and, in certain cases, the evil is without any compensation.--The question is not whether life is agreeable or painful: it might be a question, if pleasure were the end of life; but if this end is duty, there are no circumstances, however painful, which do not leave room for the possibility of fulfilling a duty.