[8] This is the only case of suicide recorded in the New Testament. Judas’s conduct is condemned in the strongest language; he is called in the Gospel of St. John (vi. 70,) “a devil, and the son of perdition;” and in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, at the 25th verse, after the account given of his violent death, he is said to have gone _to his own peculiar place_. (Εἰς τὸν τόπον τὸν ἴδιον.) Virgil thus alludes to the “place of punishment” allotted to those who sacrifice wantonly their own lives:— “Proxima deinde tenent mæsti loca, qui sibi letum Insontes peperêre manu, lucemque perosi Projecêre animas. Quàm vellent æthere in alto Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores! Fas obstat. Tristique palus inamabilis undâ Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coërcet.” (ÆNEIS, lib. vi. ver. 434 et seq.) “The next in place and punishment are they Who prodigally throw their souls away: Fools, who, repining at their wretched state, And loathing anxious life, suborn their fate: With late repentance now they would retrieve The bodies they forsook, and wish to live; Their pains and poverty desire to bear, To view the light of heaven and breathe the vital air. But fate forbids, the Stygian floods oppose, And with nine circling streams the captive souls inclose.” (DRYDEN.) [9] Macc. i. 6. [10] There is something sublime in the stern copiousness with which the stoics dwelt particularly on the facility with which suicide may be committed. “Ante omnia cavi, ne quis vos teneret invitos: PATET EXITUS. Si pugnare non vultis, licet fugere. Ideoque ex omnibus rebus, quas esse vobis necessarias volui, nihil feci facilius, quam mori. Attendite modo et videbitis quam brevis ad libertatem et quam expedita ducat via. Non tam longas in exitu vobis quam intrantibus, moras posui,” &c.—_Seneca de Providentia_, in fine. Vide epistle lxx. [11] Epistles xii. and lxx.; and De Irâ, lib. iii. [12] Corpus Juris Civilis, lib. xlviii. tit. xxi. parag. 3. [13] Vide Potter’s Antiquities. [14] Universal Geography, vol. iii. p. 155. [15] It is generally believed that Rousseau killed himself by taking arsenic; but this has been denied. Judging from the character and disposition of the man, we should feel disposed to credit the statement respecting his voluntary death. Rousseau always maintained that the following stanza of Tasso had a direct application to him, and accurately described his feelings and position in the world— “Still, still ’tis mine with grief and shame to rove, A dire example of disastrous love; While keen remorse for ever breaks my rest, And raging furies haunt my conscious breast, The lonely shades with terror must I view, The shades shall every dreadful thought renew: The rising sun shall equal horrors yield, The sun that first the dire event revealed; Still must I view myself with hateful eye, And seek, though vainly, from myself to fly.”