by John Donne
No law is so primary and simple that it does not preconceive a reason upon which it was founded, and hardly any reason is too constant for circumstances to alter it. In that case, a private man is emperor over himself; so a devout man, Dorotheus, interprets those words, “Let us create man in our own image, that is, to be judge in his own cause.” He whose conscience, well-tempered and dispassionate, assures him that the reason of self-preservation ceases for him may also presume that the law ceases too, and may do what otherwise would be against that law.
If it is true that “It belongs to the bishop of Rome to declare, interpret, limit, and distinguish the law of God,” as their authorities teach, which is to declare when the reason of the law ceases, what this author and the canons affirm may be just as true, that he may dispense with that law; he does no more than any man might do with respect to himself, if he could judge as infallibly. Let it be true that no man may at any time do anything against the law of nature; still, Aquinas says, “Dispensation does not work so that I may use it to disobey a law, but so that this law becomes to me no law in the case where the reason of it ceases.” So may any man be bishop and magistrate over himself and dispense with his conscience, where it can appear that the reason—that is, the soul and form—of the law has ceased.
As in oaths and vows, so in the law, the necessity of dispensations proceeds from the fact that a thing which, when universally considered in itself, is profitable and honest, by reason of some particular event becomes either dishonest or hurtful. Neither of these events can fall within the reach or under the commandment of any law. In these exempt and privileged cases, “The privilege is not against universal law but against the universality of law,” according to Ennenckel. It only relieves a person, it does not wound or render infirm a law, any more than I diminish the virtue of light or the dignity of the sun if, to escape its scorching, I allow myself the relief of the shade.
Neither the watchfulness of parliaments nor the descents and indulgences of princes who have consented to laws derogatory to themselves has been able to prejudice the prince’s “notwithstandings,” because prerogative is incomprehensible. It overflows and transcends all law. Just as those canons that boldly and, according to some schoolmen, blasphemously say, “The pope is not allowed,” neither diminish the fulness of his power nor impeach the motions proper to him (as they call them) or his “notwithstanding divine law,” because they are understood always to whisper some just reservation—without just cause, or in matters as they stand—so, whatever law is cast upon the conscience or liberty of man, of which the reason is mutable, is naturally conditioned in that it binds only so long as the reason lives.
Moreover, self-preservation, which we confess to be the foundation of general natural law, is nothing other than a natural affection and desire for good, whether real or apparent. Certainly the motive for martyrdom, although the body perishes, is self-preservation, because thereby out of our election to salvation our best part is advanced. Heaven, which we thus gain, is certainly good, while this life is only probably and possibly good. What Athenagoras says holds well here, “Earthly things and heavenly things so differ as verisimilitude and truth.” And Pico’s is the best description of felicity that I have found, “It is the return of any given thing to its origin.”
Now this law of self-preservation is accomplished in attaining what conduces to our ends and is good to us, for liberty, which is a faculty of doing what I would, is as much of the law of nature as preservation is. Still, if for reasons seeming good to me, such as to preserve my life when I am justly taken prisoner if I will become a slave, I may do it without violating the law of nature. If I propose to myself in self-homicide a greater good, even though I mistake it, I do not see how I transgress the general law of nature, which is an affection for good, whether real or apparent. If what I effect by death is truly a greater good, how is the other, stricter law of nature, which is rectified reason, violated?
3. Another reason that prevails much with me and keeps self- homicide from being against the law of nature is this: in all ages, in all places, and upon all occasions men of all conditions have wanted it and inclined to do it. As Cardan says, “Metal is a buried plant, and a mole is a buried animal.” So man, as though he were a buried angel, labors to be discharged of his earthly sepulchre, his body. To be sure, it may be said of all other sins that men are prone to them, and despite their frequency they are against nature—that is, rectified reason. Still, if this sin were in particular against the law of nature (as they must hold who make it worse by that circumstance) such that it worked to the destruction of our species in any other way than do intemperate lust, gluttony, or incurring penal laws, and the like, it could not be as general as they are. For, being contrary to our sensitive nature, it lacks the advantage of pleasure or delight to allure us that other sins have.
When I frame for myself a martyrology of all who have perished by their own means for the sake of religion, country, fame, love, ease, fear, and shame, I blush to see how naked all the other virtues are in comparison with fortitude; I blush to see that all the stories do not afford so many examples (either of cunning and subtle stratagems or of forcible and violent actions) for safeguarding life as they do for destroying it.
Petronius Arbiter, who served Nero, a man of pleasure, in the office of master of his pleasures, at the first frown of displeasure went home and cut his veins. To him so present and immediate a step was it from full pleasure to such a death.
How subtly and curiously Atilius Regulus destroyed himself! Being of such integrity that he would never have lied to save his life, he lied to lose it, falsely pleading that the Carthaginians had given him poison, and that within a few days he should die—although he stayed at Rome.
Codrus’s forcing of his own death exceeded even this, because in the disguise of a common soldier he was likely to perish without fame.
Herennius the Sicilian could endure beating out his own brains against a post. As though he owed thanks to the brain that had given him this device of killing himself, he would not leave off beating until he could see it and salute it.
Comas, who had been a captain of thieves, came to the torture of trial. Scorning all foreign and accessory aids to dying, he made his own breath the instrument of his death by holding it.
Hannibal, who would be beholden to none for life or death, lest he should be overtaken by extreme necessity died from poison that he always carried in a ring.
So did Demosthenes die from poison he carried in a pen.
When Aristarchus saw that neither his seventy-two years of age nor the corrupt and malignant disease of being a severe critic could wear him out, he starved himself to death.
Homer, who had written a thousand things that nobody else understood, is said to have hanged himself because he did not understand the fisherman’s riddle.
Othryades, of the 300 champions appointed to end a quarrel between the Lacedemonians and the Athenians, alone survived; when the lives of all the 300 were then in him, as though it would be a new victory to kill them once again, he killed himself.
Damocles, whom a Greek tyrant would have violated, in order to show that he could suffer any other heat scalded himself to death.
Cato’s daughter Porcia, like Catulus, opposed new measures—Quintil- ian calls them “new causes for dying”—and died by swallowing burning coals.
Poor Terence, because he lost his 108 translated comedies, drowned himself.
And the poet Labienus, because his satirical books were burned by edict, burnt himself too.
Zeno, over whom hardly any is preferred, stumbled and hurt his finger against the ground. He interpreted that as a summons from the earth and hanged himself, being then almost 100 years old. For this act Diogenes Laertius proclaims him to have been “A man who departed this life in great happiness, sound, whole, and without illness.”
To cure himself of fever, Porcius Latro killed himself.
Festus, Domitian’s minion, did it only to h
ide the deformity of a ringworm in his face.
Hipponax the poet rhymed Bupalus the painter to death with his iambics.
Licinius Macer bore well enough being called into question for great faults, but he hanged himself when he heard that Cicero would plead against him, although the Roman condemnations at that time did not inflict such heavy punishments.
Cassius Licinius, to escape Cicero’s judgment, by choking himself with a napkin had, as Tacitus calls it, “the reward of hastening his death.”
You can hardly imagine any person so happy or miserable, so reposed or so vain, or any occasion either of true loss or shame or perversity, for which there are no examples of it. Yet nobody seems to me to have made harder shift to die than Charondas, who made a new law punishing by death whoever entered the council chamber armed; then he broke that law and soon punished himself by falling upon his sword.
The general desire for such death is abundantly expressed in those swarms of Roman gladiatory champions who, Lucidus reckons, in one month cost Europe 30,000 men. Not only men of great birth and place in the state but also women coveted to be admitted to its exercise and outpouring of life, until express laws forbade it.
From Eleazar’s oration, recorded in Josephus, we may see how small persuasions moved men to this act; “He only told them that the philosophers among the Indians did so, and that we and our children were born to die but not born to be slaves.”
We may well recall that, in Caesar’s time in France, for every one who died naturally there died many by this devout violence. He says there were some, whom he calls devotees and clients (the later laws call them vassals) who, enjoying many benefits and commodities from men of higher rank, when the lord died always celebrated his funeral with their own. Caesar adds that in the memory of man no one was found who ever refused it.
This devotion, I have read somewhere, continues still in all the wives in the kingdom of Bengal in India. There not only such persons do it in testimony of an entire dependency and gratitude, but also the Samanaians, who did not inherit religious rank, priesthood, and wisdom as did the Levites among the Jews and the Gymnosophists among them, but these were admitted to it by election, when notice was taken of their sanctity. They are said to have studied ways how to die, especially when they were in the best state of health. These priests, whose care was to die thus, always summed up and abridged all their precepts into this one, “Let a pious death determine a good life.” In such estimation they held this manner of dying.
How pathetically Latinus Pacatus expresses the sweetness of dying when we will! “Others,” says he, “after the conquest, making a braver bargain with destiny, prevented uncertain death by certain death, and the slaves escaped whipping by strangling themselves. For whoever feared that after death there was no hope? Or who would therefore forbear to kill himself whom another might kill? Is another’s hand easier than your own? Or is a private death fouler than a public one? Or is it more pain to fall on your sword and to press the wound with your body—and so receive death at once—than to divide the torment, bend the knee, stretch out the neck, perhaps to more than one blow?” Then, wondering why Maximus, who had murdered the emperor Gratian and was now subdued by Theodosius, had not enjoyed the common benefit of killing himself, he (Pacatus) turns upon Gratian and says, “Reverend Gratian, you have chased your executioner and would not allow him leisure for so honest a death, lest he should stain the sacred, imperial robe with such impious blood, or a tyrant’s hand should perform your revenge, or you be beholden to him for his own death.” With similar passion speaks another panegyric to Constantine, who after a victory took from the conquered their swords, lest anyone come to grief. From this language one may see how natural it was in those times to prefer such dispatch.
In our age, when the Spaniards extended the law that was made only against the cannibals, so that those who would not accept the Christian religion should incur bondage, the Indians in infinite numbers escaped this slavery by killing themselves. They never ceased until the Spaniards by some deceptions made them think they also would kill themselves and follow the Indians with some severity into the next life.
This much seems to me sufficient to defeat the argument that is drawn from self-preservation and to prove that it is not so much in particular a law of nature that it is not often transgressed naturally.
Here we will end this second distinction.
Distinction III
1. After this, when men by civility and mutual use of one another became more thrifty of themselves and sparing of their lives, the solemnity of killing themselves at funerals wore out and vanished, but slowly and by insensible diminutions. “For first as a symbol of it the men wounded themselves and the women scratched and defaced their cheeks and sacrificed by that sprinkling of blood. After that, they made graves for themselves near their friends’ graves and entered into them alive as nuns do when they renounce the world. Then as a symbol of this symbol they only took some earth and wore it upon their heads, and so for the public benefit they were content to forfeit their custom of dying,” according to Sylvius.
Then came Christianity. Besides its many advantages over other philosophies, it has made us clearly understand the state of the next life. (Although Moses and his followers understood it, they always disguised it under earthly rewards and punishments, either because human nature from its first fall to its restitution and dignification by Christ was generally incapable of understanding such mysteries, or because it was reserved to our blessed savior to interpret and comment upon his own law, which that great successive trinity of human wisdom, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, saw only glimmeringly and variously. As to matters of this life, Christianity is the most Stoic and severe sect that ever cast bridle upon mankind.) I say, after Christianity had quenched those regards for fame, ease, shame, and such, how quickly and naturally man snatched and embraced a new way of expending his life by martyrdom!
2. There were the famous acts or famous sufferings of the Jews, even to defend their ceremonies. Many thousands of them were slain simply because they would not defend themselves on the sabbath (I Macc. 2:31- 38). The customs of that nation were always steeped in sacrifices of blood. Of almost all other nations they were the most devout and earnest, even in the immolation of men. There is the example of our blessed savior, who chose as the way for our redemption to sacrifice his life and shed his blood. While all this was fresh in the minds of the early Christians and governed all their affections, it was not hard for their authorities, even by natural reasons and examples, to invite or to cherish their propensity to martyrdom.
Therefore, when Clement of Alexandria handles this matter, he presents hardly any argument other than natural men are capable of, and such food and fuel as would serve the taste and fervor of one who was not curious beyond nature. For example, he argues thus: that death was not naturally evil; that the heathen endured greater pains for less reward; that a barbarous people immolated every year a principal philosopher to Zamolxis an idol, and those upon whom the lot fell did not mourn that fact; with most earnestness, that martyrdom is within our own power—all of which are arguments better proportioned to nature than to divinity. Clement presumed that the early Christians were persons inclined or inclinable by nature to this affection.
Tertullian’s reasons are somewhat more sublime, yet rather fine and delightful than solid and weighty. For example, he argues thus: that God, knowing that man would sin after baptism, provided him a second solace, the baptism of blood; that the death of the saints, which is said to be precious in God’s sight, cannot be understood of the natural death common to all; that, from the beginning in Abel, righteousness was afflicted. These reasons would not have entered the heads of any in whom a natural inclination had not already opened the gates.
Cyprian takes the same path and insists upon applying prophecies of two sorts, that the early Christians should be despised in this world, and that they should be rewarded in the next.
To these were added e
xternal honors, annually celebrating their memories and entitling their deaths birthdays, and the early instituting of the office of notaries to regulate their passions—even in Clement of Rome’s time; also, the proposing that their embalmed heads be worshiped, which term (although Eunapius spoke it profanely) was not undeserved by the general misuse of such devotion.
After the monopoly of appropriating martyrdom and bestowing its benefits only upon those who held the integrity of the faith and were in unity with the church, of which persuasion Augustine and Jerome and most of the ancients are said to be, came a continual increase in the dignity and merit of it, such as that by virtue of the performance of the act it purged actual sin, as baptism did original sin, even for one without charity and in schism. If it did not merit salvation, it diminished the intenseness of damnation. By these means they incited man’s nature to it. The proneness might also have been a little corruptly warmed towards it by always seeing those punished who afflicted them, for Tertullian says, “No city escaped punishment that had shed Christian blood.”
After this, they went on to admit more into the martyrs’ fellowship and to confer and extend their privileges. By such indulgence are the innocents slain by Herod (Matt. 2:16) counted as martyrs. So is John the Baptist, although he did not die (Matt. 14:1-12, Mark 6:14-29) for a matter of Christian faith. So is he who suffers for any virtue. So is he who dies in his mother’s womb if she is a martyr. So is he who, having been mortally wounded for his Christian profession, recovers. So is he who, being not mortally wounded, dies afterwards of sickness contracted by his own negligence, if that negligence did not amount to mortal sin.