Phil Robinson

“ A Samurai must not be heard to groan from pain. How different from the respectful applause that greets the Japanese self-murderer is the first sentiment of healthy aversion that is aroused in English men and women by the news of a suicide. It is true that sometimes, at the first glance, the preceding circumstances compel our scorn or provoke us into only a disdainful commiseration with the victim, but pity is sure to follow. For the Hara-kiri is always pathetic; and if the suicide be a woman, how tenderly the feeling of pity is intensified! ”

“ In other forms the same unhesitating resignation of life presents itself to us as heroism of a grand type; but in the piteously small scale of the surrounding circumstances, and even the familiarity of the nature of the death, the grandeur of such a sacrifice is lost, and we feel only pity for the unhappy creature thus needlessly exchanging her bright home for the grave. False sentiment tempts men often to magnify the bravery of self-inflicted death, forgetting that the insanity which makes suicide so pitiful robs it also of all that commands admiration. ”

“ In the days of Ashikaga the Shiogun, when Japan was vexed by a civil war, and prisoners of high rank were every day being put to shameful deaths, was instituted the ceremonious and honorable mode of suicide by disembowelling, known as Seppuku or Hara-kiri, an institution for which, as the old Japanese historian says, “ men in all truth should be very grateful. To put his enemy, against whom he has cause for enmity, to death, and then to disembowel himself, is the duty of every Samurai.” ”

“ But that really grand system of legalized self-murder which was for ages the privilege of all who felt wounded in their honor, gives the Japanese a horrible pre-eminence in the Hara-kiri, and crime though we call it, there was much to admire in the stately heroism of those orderly suicides, notable for their fine appreciation of the dignity of Death, their reverent courtesy to his awful terrors, and sublime scorn for pain of body. From their infancy they looked forward to suicide as a terrible probability, the great event for which through the intervening years they had to prepare themselves. ”

“ In death itself there is nothing for hopeful and helpful men and women, the workers of the world, to be afraid of. Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark, and with as much reason. But this manly disregard of superstitious terrors should not degenerate into the holding of life cheap, nor, under the sudden pressure of unusual circumstances, make us lose sight of that bright star of hope which, if we will only look ahead, shines always over to-morrow. ”

“ Races, our own notably, conspicuous wherever found in the earth for their active, hearty, healthful pursuit of work or pleasure, refuse to believe that any but the mad, whether permanently or for the time only, would wilfully cut short their life’s interests, and exchange sunlight and manly labor, all the ups and downs that make men brave and hopeful, for the gloomy ignominy of a premature grave. ”

“ Lurking under the delusion lies the faint-hearted apprehension that to-morrow would be, and must be, just the same as to-day, a fear of the future that underlies every wilful suicide, and is at once the most disastrous and deplorable frame of the human mind. ”

“ In itself the crime is detestable, not only as high treason against the Creator, inasmuch as, to quote the main argument of the Pagan moralists, we betray at the first summons of danger the life it was given us to guard, but also as profaning the nobility of our nature. ”

“ But the circumstances of their lives, with religion or superstition teaching them that fate predestines everything, and magnifying the most trivial occurrences into calamities from which there is no appeal, often surround their deaths with incidents so picturesque and quaint that they deceive the judgment, and exalt the paltry suicide into an heroic surrender of life. ”

“ Indeed it requires no strong passion to take the terrors out of death, for we know how frequently suicides have left behind them, as the only reason for their act, that they were “tired of life,” weary perhaps, of an existence monotonous with poverty or sickness, or even simply borne down by the mere tedious repetition of uneventful days. ”

“ To some races such hopeful prospects seem impossible, and, in the East, especially, the first summons of the enemy finds the garrison ready to yield. This frequency of suicide, however, and the general indifference to the crime as a crime, are among the surest signs of inferiority. All savage tribes, and even some of the nations of the East, though more advanced in civilization, fly to death as the first resource in trouble. They seek the relief of the grave before having sought any other. ”

“ Man is born with the strong instinct of living, and, as happy, careless childhood is left behind, serious and tender interests grow round the individual life, each of which makes it a more precious possession, and, by admitting others to share in its troubles and joys, robs the owner of all claim to dispose of it as if it were his own, undivided and intact. ”

“ Yours is the place of honor on the piled rugs — in the centre of your friends. How keenly they fix their eyes upon you. It is their duty to see that you are dead before those tapers are out. Those tapers cannot last another fifteen minutes. ”

“ But do not trust to your old friendship with those around you; do not try to break away from the sound of those clearly spoken sentences; for if you do, your friends will knock you down, and while you are grovelling on the mats, will hew your head off with their heavy-handled swords. They will hold yon down and stab you to death. ”

“ Our courts of law generalize such impulses under the term “temporary insanity,” and the world accepts the term as a satisfactory one, for it is not human to believe that, a sane person would under any circumstances throw up life. ”

“ But these, as actually resulting in suicide, are very exceptional and infrequent. In most cases life is thrown away impatiently and peevishly, a sudden impulse of remorse or grief nerving the victim to forget how grand life really is, with its earnest aims and hearty work, and how bright it is with its e very-day home affections and its cheerful hopes of better things and better times. ”

“ Donne, claiming for the act the same degrees of culpability that the law attaches to homicide, others founding their pleas on the ground that Holy Writ nowhere condemns the crime, and one profanely arguing that his life is a man’s own to do with as he will. Goethe may be called an apologist for suicide, and so may all those historians or novelists who make their heroes “die nobly” by their own hands ”

“ They will be tenderly compassionate, but terribly stern. They will guard you while your dying declaration is being read; if you are fainting, they will support you, lest your enemies should say you were afraid of death. ”

“ With tender care has been spread the matting on which you will walk to the spot, so that you need not wear your sandals. Some men when on their way to disembowel themselves suffer from nervousness, so that the sandals are liable to catch in the matting and trip them up. ”