It is a sophism, they say, to call suicide a cowardice; for it requires a great deal of courage to take one's life.--No one denies that there is a certain amount of physical courage coupled with taking one's life; but there is a still greater courage, a moral courage, in braving pain, poverty, slavery. Suicide is therefore a relative cowardice. It matters not, moreover, whether suicide be a brave or a cowardly act; what is certain is, that man cannot destroy within himself the agent subject to the law of duty without implicitly denying this law and all there is within contained. Finally, it will be said that the moral personality is distinct from the body, and that in destroying the body, one does not injure the personality. But we shall answer, that the only personality of which we can dispose, and of which we have the care, is that which is actually united to our physical body. It is that very personality that has duties to perform; it is that which we cannot sacrifice to a state of things absolutely unknown to us. As to our duties toward others, there is no one that has absolutely no service to render to his fellow-men; and each of us is always able to render them the greatest of services, namely, to give them the example of virtue, courage, gentleness, and patience. Finally, in respect to God, if we look upon life as a trial, man has no right to free himself of this trial before it is ended; if we look upon it as a punishment, we have no right to cut short its duration as long as nature has not pronounced on it. Can we not, then, it is asked, change any thing in the order of things, since all is disposed by God?--Certainly we can; we can, as we see fit, modify things, but not persons. God, it is said again, has given us life: we can, then, do with it what we like.--But life is not purely a gift, an absolute gift: it is bound up in the moral personality which is not in our power, and which is not to be considered a thing to traffic with, give away, or destroy. To admit the legitimacy of suicide, is to admit that man belongs to himself as a _thing_ belongs to its master; it is implicitly to admit the right to traffic with one's own personality and, according to Kant's energetic expression, "to treat one's self as a means and not as an end." =135. Suicide from a sense of honor.=--All suicide, having for its motive the escape from pain (exception being made, of course, of suicides caused by insanity), should be condemned without qualification. But is it the same with suicides instigated by a feeling of honor, either to avoid an outrage one is threatened with, or to escape the shame of an outrage one has suffered?