The mention of suicide as the logical consequence of pessimism may serve as an occasion to glance at the curious and contradictory views that are expressed about it. There are few problems of life (apart from immortality and the freedom of the will) on which such absurd and contradictory things have been said even down to our own time. The theist who regards life as a gift of God may hesitate to reject or return it--although the offering of one's self as a victim for other men is considered a high virtue. Most educated people still look upon suicide as a great sin, and in some countries (such as England) the attempt is punished by law. In the Middle Ages, when a hundred thousand men were burned alive for heresy or witchcraft, suicides were punished by a disgraceful burial. As Schopenhauer says: "Clearly there is nothing in the world to which a man has a plainer right than his own life and person. It is simply ridiculous for criminal justice to deal with suicide." The advance of embryology in the last thirty years has made it clear that the individual life of a man (and all other vertebrates) begins at the moment when the male sperm-cell and the maternal ovum coalesce. In this blind chance plays an important part, as in so many other important aspects of life--taking "chance" in the scientific sense, which I have explained in chapter xiv. of the _Riddle_. Hence, the real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents; very often this consequence of the act of love has been anything but desired. If, then, the circumstances of life come to press too hard on the poor being who has thus developed, without any fault of his, from the fertilized ovum--if, instead of the hoped-for good, there come only care and need, sickness and misery of every kind--he has the unquestionable right to put an end to his sufferings by death. Every religion assents to this under certain conditions, even Christianity when it says: "If thine eye scandalize thee, cast it from thee." It is true that the conventional morality condemns suicide under any circumstances; but the reasons it alleges are ridiculously slight, and are not improved by having the mantle of religion wrapped about them.