3. An argument from general consequences, however, does not go down into the depths of things. There is always something morally crooked and inordinate in an action itself, the general consequences whereof are bad. It remains to point out the moral crookedness, inordination, and unreasonableness, that is intrinsic to the act of suicide, apart from its consequences. We find the inordination in this, that suicide is an act falling upon undue matter, being an act destructive of that which the agent has power over only to preserve. It is natural to every being, animate and inanimate, to the full extent of its entity and power, to maintain itself, and to resist destruction as long as it can. This is the struggle for existence, one of the primary laws of nature. Man has intelligence and power over himself, that he may conduct his own struggle well and wisely. He may struggle more or less, as he sees expedient, looking to higher goods even than self-preservation in this mortal life: but he may not take that power of managing himself, which nature invests him with for his preservation, and use it to his own destruction. Should he do so, he perverts the natural order of his own being, and thereby sins. (_Ethics_, c. vi., s. i., nn. 1-5, p. 109.) 4. It may be objected, that man is only bound to self-preservation so long as life is a blessing; that, when the scale of death far outweighs that of life in desirableness, it is cruelty to himself to preserve his life any longer, and a kindness to himself to destroy it; that in such a plight, accordingly, it is not unnatural for a man to put himself, not so much out of life as out of misery. To this argument it is sometimes answered that, whereas death is the greatest of evils, it is foolish and wicked to resort to dying as a refuge against any other calamity. But this answer proves too much. It would show that it is never lawful even to wish for death: whereas under many conditions, such as those now under consideration, death is a consummation devoutly to be wished, and may be most piously desired, as a gain and by comparison a good: as Ecclesiasticus says (xxx. 17): "Better is death than a bitter life, and everlasting rest than continual sickness." The truth seems to be, that there are many things highly good and desirable in themselves, which become evil when compassed in a particular way. The death of a great tyrant or persecutor may be a blessing to the universe, but his death by the hand of an assassin is an intolerable evil. So is death, as the schoolmen say, _in facto esse_, and everlasting rest, better than a bitter life, but not death _in fieri_, when that means dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over: but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and