But, among the numberless faiths of the world, extinct, and now existing, many have had a direct tendency to invest the idea of self-destruction with a charm. Some because they taught the doctrine of total extinction at death; others because they inculcated a belief in metempsychosis; whilst others, again, have taught the certainty of bliss hereafter, if death occur, whether self-sought or otherwise, while fighting for the faith. Philosophy also, which at different times supplanted or supplemented religious ideas, has often notably encouraged Suicide. The far-famed system of the Stoics, founded by Zeno, directly approved of it; to them it was the culminating point of self-abnegation, a flight from degradation. The equally notable system of the Epicureans also found in Suicide a congenial theme for panegyric; they believed in no future state, and proposed it as a means of escape from pain or annoyance here. In recent times, accompanying periods of decline of religious fervour, new systems of mental and moral philosophy have sprung up and become popular; and these, if not openly advocating the cause and permissibility of self-murder, have never associated themselves with Christianity in condemning it. A perusal of the volumes of Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau, and of David Hume, will make this obvious. But it seems probable that in the minds of many suicides there has been, below any religious faith, or philosophical dogma, the deeply-rooted conviction that death was a sleep and permanent rest, an eternal oblivion in the grave, and they consequently came to regard it as the grand solatium for present heart-breaking grief of mind, or intolerable pain of body. No more powerful individual deterrent has been suggested than the firm unwavering mental conviction (which has always been propounded by the Christian church) that a self-inflicted death is an evil to which nothing on this side of the grave can compare, and that to rush unsolicited into the presence of the Creator is an inexpiable crime. As a general preventive, the force of a well directed system of education, acting on the probably unlimited capacity for improvement inherent in the human race, is the lever to which modern civilization is disposed to trust. But as I have already stated, several modern systems of philosophy and ethics, whilst they are the offshoots and result of a more highly developed mind, yet have not assisted in the extinction of this blot, but have rather tended to exculpate suicide, and remove the idea of its moral sinfulness. The line of argument with respect to our subject, which is followed by some of those who lead modern philosophical thought, may perhaps be briefly outlined as follows:─ It is an essential attribute of Humanity that it is progressive; systems of Morality arise which are each of a higher nature than the preceding; there is no finality even in Religious improvement.