To seek death by one's own hand is not a new method to overcome the ills that relentlessly chase their victims through briar patch and over flint hill. It is a right that has been claimed by very many in all ages, and some of the world's most distinguished personages committed self-murder to escape impending trouble. The crime—for it is a crime—has been defended by such famous writers as Gibbon, Hume, Von Hartman and Schopenhauer. Strangely enough, as civilization advances and universities multiply, the roll of self-murderers seems to increase. It can not be said, therefore, that the spread of culture and knowledge, of discoveries in the field of science, and the adoption of higher codes of commercial and social ethics, educate or influence the world away from the old-time philosophy that a man's highest right is to quit living by his own hand when he is tired of life. Indeed, it would seem that the wider the range of personal liberty, and the more extended the opportunities for intellectual expansion and experiment, the incentive to self-destruction is intensified. At a recent meeting of the American Medico-Legal congress it was held by not a few members that not only was suicide justifiable in cases where there appeared to be no other way for one to relieve one's misery, but that a physician would be justifiable in ending the life of his patient under certain circumstances. I think we all will agree that such a sentiment is unworthy of a manly man. When a man assumes to be a law unto himself he is certain to come in contact with forces which will sweep him out of the current of the river of individual progress into whirls and eddies, which agitate the waters fearfully but do not move onward. He will realize, too, that God, the universe and himself are one stupendous whole—absolutely inseparable—and that when he quits any sphere of existence by his own act in violation of the law of his being he is still a necessary part of the whole, and that in severing the cord of earthly life he not only fails of his purpose, but he himself will feel the jar more severely than any other entity in all the worlds of God, and not only so, but he shall continue to live amid distracting discord until he voluntarily readjusts himself to that system of law and harmony from which he essayed unlawfully to break away. Certainly he will find pain and sorrow in returning, but not to return is to be without rest eternally. Nevertheless, all men appoint their time to die by their conduct of life, which in nearly all cases is a form of suicide.