943. What is the cause of the weariness of life which sometimes takes possession of people without any assignable reason?

"Idleness; lack of conviction; sometimes, satiety. For him who employs his faculties in the pursuit of some useful aim in harmony with his natural aptitudes, exertion is not disagreeable; his time passes quickly in congenial occupation; and he is able to bear the vicissitudes of life with patience and resignation, because he looks forward to a more solid and lasting happiness in the future."

 

944. Has a man the right to dispose of his life?

"No; that right belongs to God alone. He who voluntarily commits suicide contravenes the providential ordering which sent him into the earthly life."

 

- Is not suicide always voluntary?

"The madman who kills himself does not know what he is doing."

 

945. What is to be thought of those who commit suicide because they are sick of life?

"Fools! why did they not employ themselves in some useful work? Had they done so, life would not have been a weariness to them."

 

946. What is to be thought of those who resort to suicide in order to escape from the troubles and disappointments of this world?

"They are weaklings who lack courage to bear the petty annoyances of existence. God helps those who suffer bravely, but not those who have neither strength nor courage. The tribulations of life are trials or expiations; happy are those who bear them without murmuring, for great will be their reward! Unhappy, on the contrary, are those who expect their well-being from what they impiously call 'chance' or 'luck'! Chance, or luck, to borrow their own expressions, may favour them for a time; but only to make them feel, afterwards, and all the more bitterly, the emptiness of those words."

 

- Will not those who have driven an unhappy fellow-creature to this deed of despair be held responsible for the consequences of their action?

"Yes; and heavy indeed will be their punishment, for they will have to answer for those consequences as for a murder."

 

947. Can we consider as having committed suicide the man who, becoming disheartened in his struggle with adversity, allows himself to die of despair?

"Such self-abandonment is suicide; but those who had caused the crime, or might have prevented it, would be more to blame for it than the one by whom it had been committed, and the latter would therefore be judged leniently. But, nevertheless, you must not suppose that he would be entirely absolved if he had been wanting in firmness and perseverance, or had failed to make the best use of his intelligence to help himself out of his difficulties. And it would go still harder with him if he had been one of those whose intelligence is paralysed by pride, who would blush to earn their living by manual labour, and would rather die of starvation than derogate from what they call their "social position." Is there not a hundredfold more nobleness and true dignity in bearing up against adversity, in braving the ill-natured remarks of the futile and selfish, whose goodwill is only for those who are in want of nothing, and who turn the cold shoulder to all who are in need of help? To throw away one's life on account of such people is doubly absurd, seeing that they will be perfectly indifferent to the sacrifice."

 

948. Is suicide as blamable, when committed in order to escape the disgrace of having done wrong, as when it is prompted by despair?

"A fault is not effaced by suicide, which, on the contrary, is a second fault added to the first. He who has had the courage to do wrong should have the courage to bear the consequences of his wrong-doing. God is the sole judge, and sometimes diminishes the penalty of wrong-doing in consideration of the circumstances which led to it."

 

949. Is suicide excusable wizen committed in order to avoid bringing disgrace on one's children or family?

"He who has recourse to such an expedient does wrong; but, as he believes his action to be for the best, God takes note of his intention, for his suicide is a self-imposed expiation; his fault is extenuated by his intention, but it is none the less a fault. But when you have got rid of your social prejudices and abuses, you will have no more suicides."

He who takes his own life, in order to escape the disgrace of a bad action, proves that he attaches more value to the estimation of men than to that of God; for he goes back into the spirit-world laden with his iniquities, of the means of atoning for which, during his earthly life, he has thus deprived himself. God is less inexorable than men often are; He pardons those who sincerely repent, and takes account of all our efforts to repair what we have done amiss; but nothing is repaired by suicide.

 

950. What is to be thought of him who makes away with himself in the hope of arriving sooner at a happier state of existence?

"Another piece of folly! Let a man do good, and he will be much more sure of reaching such a state. His suicide will delay his entrance into a better world; for he himself will ask to be allowed to come back to the earth, in order to complete the life that he has cut short in pursuit of a mistaken idea. The sanctuary of the good is never opened by a fault, no matter what may have been its motive."

 

951. Is not the sacrifice of one’s life meritorious when it is made in order to save the lives of others, or to be useful to them?

"Incurred for such an end, it is sublime; but such a voluntary sacrifice of life is not suicide. It is the useless sacrifice that is displeasing to God, and also that which is tarnished by pride. A sacrifice is only meritorious when disinterested; if accomplished in view of a selfish end, its value is proportionally lessened in the sight of God."

 

Every sacrifice of our interest or enjoyment made for the sake of others is supremely meritorious in the sight of God; for it is the fulfilling of the law of charity. Life being, of all earthly possessions, the one to which men attach the greatest value, he who renounces it for the good of his fellow-creatures does not commit a crime he accomplishes a sacrifice. But, before accomplishing it, he should consider whether his life might not be more useful than his death.

 

952. Does he commit suicide who falls a victim to the excessive indulgence of passions which he knows will hasten his death, but which habit has converted into physical necessities that he is unable to control?

"He commits moral suicide. Do you not see that a man, in such a case, is trebly guilty? For he is guilty of a want of firmness, of the sin of bestiality, and of forgetfulness of God."

 

- Is such a man more or less guilty than he who kills himself from despair?

"He is more guilty, because he has had time to reflect on the suicidal nature of the course he was pursuing. In the case of him who commits suicide on the spur of the moment, there is sometimes a degree of bewilderment not unallied to madness. The former will be punished much more severely than the latter; for the retributive penalties of crime are always proportioned to the consciousness of wrong-doing that accompanied its commission.”

 

953. Is it wrong on the part of him who finds himself exposed to some terrible and inevitable death to shorten his sufferings by killing himself?

"It is always wrong not to await the moment of dissolution appointed by God. Besides, how can a man tell whether the end of his life has really come, or whether some unexpected help may not reach him at what he supposes to be his last moment?"

 

- We admit that suicide is reprehensible under ordinary circumstances, but we are supposing a case in which death is inevitable, and in which life is only shortened by a few instants?

"There is always in such a case a want of resignation and of submission to the will of the Creator."

 

- What in such a case are the consequences of suicide?

"The same as in all other cases; an expiation proportioned to the gravity of the fault, according to the circumstances under which it was committed."

 

954. Is there guilt in the imprudence which has accidentally caused a loss of life?

"There is no guilt where there is no positive intention or consciousness of doing harm."

 

955. Are the women who, in some countries, voluntarily burn themselves to death with the body of their husband, to be considered as committing suicide, and have they to undergo the punishment of that crime?

"They obey the dictates of a superstitious prejudice, and, moreover, are often the victims of force rather than of their own free-will. They believe themselves to be accomplishing a duty, and such an act does not partake of the character of suicide. Their excuse is found in the moral nullity and ignorance of the greater number of them. All such barbarous and stupid customs will disappear with the development of civilisation."

 

956. Do those persons attain the end they have in view, who, unable to bear the loss of the objects of their affection, kill themselves in the hope of rejoining them in the other life?

"In such cases the result of suicide is the opposite of what was hoped for. Instead of being reunited to the object of their affection, those who have made this sad mistake find themselves separated, and for a very long time, from the being they hoped to rejoin; for God cannot recompense, by the granting of a favour, an act which is at once a proof of moral cowardice, and an insult offered to Himself in distrusting His Providence. They will pay for their folly with sorrows still greater than those they fancied they were about to shorten, and for which they will not be compensated by the satisfaction they hoped do obtain." (934 et seq.)

 

957. What are in general the effects of suicide on the state of the spirit by whom it has been committed?

"The consequences of suicide vary in different cases, because the penalties it entails are always proportioned to the circumstances which, in each case, have led to its commission. The one punishment which none can escape who have committed suicide is disappointment; the rest of their punishment depends on circumstances. Some of those who have killed themselves expiate their fault at once; others do so in a new earthly life harder to bear than the one whose course they have interrupted."

 

Observation has confirmed the statement that the consequences of suicide are not the same in all cases; but it has also shown us that some of those consequences, resulting from the sudden interruption of life, are the same in all cases of violent death. Foremost among these is the greater tenacity and consequent persistence of the link that unites the spirit and the body, which link, in nearly all such cases, is in its full strength at the moment when it is broken; whereas, when death is the result of natural causes, that link has been gradually weakened, and is often severed before life is completely extinct. The consequences of violent death are, first, the prolongation of the mental confusion which usually follows death, and, next, the illusion which causes a spirit, during a longer or shorter period, to believe himself to be still living in the earthly life. (155, 165.)

The affinity which continues to exist between the spirit and the body produces, in the case of some of those who have committed suicide, a sort of repercussion of the state of the body in the consciousness of the spirit, who is thus compelled to perceive the effects of its decomposition, and experiences therefrom a sensation of intense anguish and horror; a state which may continue as long as the life which he has interrupted ought to have lasted. This state is not a necessary result of suicide; but he who has voluntarily shortened his life can never escape the consequences of his want of courageous endurance; sooner or later, and in some way or other, he is made to expiate his fault. Thus, many spirits who had been very unhappy upon the earth have stated that they had committed suicide in their preceding existence, and that they had voluntarily submitted to new trials in order to try to bear them with more resignation. In some cases the result of suicide is a sort of connexion with terrestrial matter, from which they vainly endeavour to free themselves, that they may rise to happier worlds, access to which is denied to them; in other cases it is regret for having done something useless, and from which they have reaped only disappointment.

Religion, morality, all systems of philosophy, condemn suicide as being contrary to the law of nature; all lay it down as a principle that we have no right to voluntarily shorten our life; but why have we not that right? Why are we not at liberty to put an end to our sufferings? It was reserved for Spiritism to show, by the example of those who have succumbed to that temptation, that suicide is not only a fault, as being an infraction of a moral law (a consideration of little weight with some persons), but is also a piece of stupidity, since no benefit is to be gained by it, but quite the contrary. The teachings of Spiritism in regard to this subject are not merely theoretic; for it places the facts of the case before our eyes.