not afraid of death itself? If the law punishes people for trying to commit suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the attempt a failure. The ancients, moreover, were very far from regarding the matter in that light. Pliny says: _Life is not so desirable a thing as to be protracted at any cost. Whoever you are, you are sure to die, even though your life has been full of abomination and crime. The chief of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings which Nature gives to man, there is none greater than an opportune death; and the best of it is that every one can avail himself of it.[1]_ And elsewhere the same writer declares: _Not even to God are all things possible; for he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die, and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life, this is the best of his gifts to man.[2]_ Nay, in Massilia and on the isle of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons for relinquishing his life, was handed the cup of hemlock by the magistrate; and that, too, in public.[3] And in ancient times, how many heroes and wise men died a voluntary death. Aristotle,[4] it is true, declared suicide to be an offence against the State, although not against the person; but in Stobaeus' exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy there is the following remark: _The good man should flee life when his misfortunes become too great; the bad man, also, when he is too prosperous_. And similarly: _So he will marry and beget children and take part in the affairs of the State, and, generally, practice virtue and continue to live; and then, again, if need be, and at any time necessity compels him, he will depart to his place of refuge in the tomb.[5]_ And we find that the Stoics actually praised suicide as a noble and heroic action, as hundreds of passages show; above all in the works of Seneca, who expresses the strongest approval of it. As is well known, the Hindoos look upon suicide as a religious act, especially when it takes the form of self-immolation by widows; but also when it consists in casting oneself under the wheels of the chariot of the god at Juggernaut, or being eaten by crocodiles in the Ganges, or being drowned in the holy tanks in the temples, and so on. The same thing occurs on the stage--that mirror of life. For example, in _L'Orphelin de la Chine_[6] a celebrated Chinese play, almost all the noble characters end by suicide; without the slightest hint anywhere, or any impression being produced on the spectator, that they are committing a crime. And in our own theatre it is much the same--Palmira, for instance, in _Mahomet_, or Mortimer in _Maria Stuart_, Othello, Countess Terzky.[7] Is Hamlet's monologue the meditation of a criminal? He merely declares that if we had any certainty of being annihilated by it, death would be infinitely preferable to the world as it is. But _there lies the rub_! [Footnote 1: Hist. Nat. Lib. xxviii., 1.] [Footnote 2: Loc. cit. Lib. ii. c. 7.]