"If it is found the dead man was a defaulter or an opium-eater, the most aimless cumberer of the earth experiences a certain sense of justification. If a man is a villain, he must _want_ to get out of the world; but for honest folk life cannot be too long. Consequently, to support existence (or let some one else do it) seems in some way a tribute to a man's personal worth or mental poise. If it is found that the suicide had the audacity to leave the world without the urging of some vulgar misdeed to account for his unpleasant independence, then up goes the universal cry, 'He was insane!' Without doubt! The world is good enough for his betters, why not for him? 'Oh, the fellow was crazy!' And that settles it. As a proof _we_ are mentally sound, we will live on at any cost, be it our own souls or our brothers'. No, no. I tell you this thirst for life cannot be proved so worthy an instinct as some have hoped to show. It is the instinct that makes the brute world one vast slaughter-house. 'One must live' would be the motto of the shark, if he had one. 'One must live' is in the roar of the Bengal tiger, and the jackal's cry. I do not see but the greed of life is the strongest survival in man of primitive animal instinct. But it is not the noblest of our legacies. Over many an unworthy page of human history is that legend, 'One must live.'" She stretched out her hands, crying, "_It is not true!_ One must live _worthily_, or one can die! I feel a passionate sense of the wrong and ruin wrought by the general view. I feel it"--she dropped her eyes--"when I hear that a man steals to keep from starving, when"--her voice was heavy with shame--"when I see wide thoroughfares full at night of young girls and brazen women 'who must live.' 'Why don't they see there is an escape?' I think." She threw back her head with a quick movement, and just as suddenly the look of courage dimmed. "Then I realize that some of them, even if they could rise above the animal instinct to prolong life at any price, would remember priestly warnings, and fancy their chances in the hereafter brighter if they lived on--vile scavengers on the highways of the world!--than if they were brave enough to disdain an evil heritage, and wise enough not to fear death. Those who are so lustful of life"--far beyond the little company she gazed, as one gathering in a survey all the peoples of the earth--"they are like beggars at a feast. They glut themselves indiscriminately, afraid to let a single dish go by. They sit stupid and gorged, still mechanically taking of everything passed them, with dulled taste and jaded appetite, eating and drinking, with sense left to think only, 'Who knows? we may never be at such a feast again.' I tell you"--she was back now with her dingy guests--"it is the beast in us that clings so fiercely to life. In the case of the unfortunate, the hard-pressed, the ancient instinct often outlives hope, principle, innocence--all that's best in humanity."