Charlotte M. Yonge - "Life of John Coleridge Patteson"

George Bernard Shaw - "John Bull's Other Island"

Margaret Dixon McDougall - "The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland"

Augusta Evans Wilson - "At the Mercy of Tiberius"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll Latest

C >> Col. Robert Green Ingersoll >> Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll Latest




So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and
ruin his family and friends? Why should he add to the injury? Why
should he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of
others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears?

Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life hesitate to still
his heart? The grave is better than the cell. Sleep is sweeter than
the ache of toil. The dead have no masters.

So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of home closed against
her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that will help, no eye that
will soften with pity, the future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes
of dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts like clouds
broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the serpents of remorse, flying
from horrors too great to bear, rushes with joy through the welcome door
of death.

Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable suicide--cases
in which not to end life would be a mistake, sometimes almost a crime.

As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself. And if a
man honestly decides that death is best--best for him and others--and
acts upon the decision, why should he be blamed?

Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical coward. He may
have lacked moral courage, but not physical. It may be said that some
men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between two
fires--the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they take
the chance of death. So the Christian martyrs were, according to their
belief, between two fires--the flames of the fagot that could burn but
for a few moments and the fires of God, that were eternal. And they
chose the flames of the fagot.

Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and
pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the
suicide a coward. It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or
that Seneca was. Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for. Cato was
not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with hundreds of others who
felt that they had reached the end--that the journey was done, the
voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain that the
man who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops all other deeds,
that shackles accident and bolts up change," is not lacking in physical
courage.

If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses,
in hospitals, they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the
stains of dishonor, they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this can
be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."

Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He
knew that he could defeat the Emperor. He knew that "at the bottom of
every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
Liberty sat and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he
allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. He said, "There
is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits
innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in
which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death."
To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.

Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not
only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became
outcasts. If, however, they died before conviction, their children were
saved. Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly they were
not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes, they had enough of honor,
of manhood, left to save their innocent children. This was not
cowardice.

Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. Men lose their
property. The fear of the future over powers them. Things lose
proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of
frenzy, kill their selves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart--
the light fading from their lives--seek the refuge of death. Those who
take their lives in painful, barbarous ways--who mangle their throats
with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take poisons
that torture like the rack--such persons must be insane. But those who
take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and against,
and who decide that death is best--the only good--and then resort to
reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full possession of
their minds.

Life is not the same to all--to some a blessing, to some a curse, to
some not much in any way. Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
with the keenest joy, and some with indifference.

Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number of
suicides. The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the
hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural
death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such
believers to suffer the pangs of this life. When there is no fear of
the future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have
less hesitation about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox
religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused parents to
murder their children and many thousands to destroy themselves and
others.

It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill
themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is
forgotten, "God" and hell are out of their minds. I am satisfied that
many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of
insanity, and many are perfectly sane.

The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is
cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful
suicides. When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so
persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man? A man
seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take
extra pains and precautions to make death certain.

This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and
enforced by ignorance and cruelty.

When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk and
narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of death,
why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?

Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. I do not take
gods, heavens or hells into account. My horizon is the known, and my
estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world.
People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for
other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state. Our joys, our
sufferings and our duties are here. The law of New York about the
attempt to commit suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal.
Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who have lost all
fear of death, care nothing for law and its penalties. Death is
liberty, absolute and eternal.

We should remember that nothing happens but the natural. Back of every
suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient
cause. Nothing happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each
other. There is no space between--no room for chance. Given a certain
heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary
result. If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions. We
must, by education, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the
value of the average life. We must cultivate the brain and heart--do
away with false pride and false modesty. We must become generous enough
to help our fellows without degrading them. We must make industry
useful work of all kinds--honorable. We must mingle a little affection
with our charity--a little fellowship. We should allow those who have
sinned to really reform. We should not think only of what the wicked
have done, but we should think of what we have wanted to do. People do
not hate the sick. Why should they despise the mentally weak--the
diseased in brain?

Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances--of conditions--
and we do as we must. This great truth should till the heart with pity
for the failures of our race.

Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce the suicide; that in
old times they buried him where the roads crossed, and drove a stake
through his body. They took his property from his children and gave it
to the State.

If Christians would only think, they would see the orthodox religion
rests upon suicide--that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without
suicide the whole world would have been lost.

If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the
Jews without hurting them. But instead of using his power he allowed
them to take his life.

If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death
with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not
say that he committed suicide?

There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God and allowed the Jews
to kill Him, then He consented to His own death--refused, though
perfectly able, to defend and protect Himself, and was, in fact, a
suicide.

We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. As long as there
shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and
women will untie life's knot and seeks the peace of death.

To the hopelessly imprisoned--to the dishonored and despised--to those
who have failed, who have no future, no hope--to the abandoned, the
broken-hearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and
women--how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!

And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome deliverer.
Death is as natural and as merciful as life. When we have journeyed
long--when we are weary--when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk,
for the cool kisses of the night--when the senses are dull--when the
pulse is faint and low--when the mists gather on the mirror of memory--
when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived--when
the future has but empty hands--death is as welcome as a strain of
music.

After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next to eternal
happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by
no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and
forever.

The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in
spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger
and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that
so few of the miserable are brave enough to die--that so many are
terrified by the "something after death"--by the specters and phantoms
of superstition.

Most people are in love with life. How they cling to it in the arctic
snows--how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea--how they
linger in famine--how they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling
edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope
and courage.

But many have not such natures. They cannot bear defeat. They are
disheartened by disaster. They lie down on the field of conflict and
give the earth their blood.

They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We should not curse or
blame--we should pity. On their pallid faces our tears should fall.

One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming
and loving daughter, committed suicide. He was a man of generous
impulses. His heart was loving and tender. He was conscientious, and
so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he
thought wise and best. He was the victim of his virtues. Let us be
merciful in our judgments.

All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the
malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the
ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances
and conditions sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion's
storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of insanity--raise
their hands against themselves and desperately put out the light of
life.

Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If they are insane
they should, if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be
reasoned with, calmed and assisted.





Ingersoll's Letter, The Right to One's Life Colonel Ingersoll's Eloquent
Reply to His Critics


In the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that
"under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."

This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and the
writers of letters. These people contend that the right of self-
destruction does not and can not exist. They insist that life is the
gift of God, and that He only has the right to end the days of men;
that it is our duty to beat the sorrows that He sends with grateful
patience. Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes--worse
than the murder of another.

The first question, then, is:

Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?

A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer--his agony is intense--his
suffering all that nerves can feel. His life is slowly being taken. Is
this the work of the good God? Did the compassionate God create the
cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim?

This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of no
use to himself. His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no use
to his wife, his children, his friends or society. Day after day he is
rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the brain to
sleep. Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it proper
for him to take refuge in sleep?

If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes pleasure in the
sufferings of men--that He gloats over the agonies of His children. If
there be a good God, He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the
evils of life.

So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer--a burden to himself
and others, useless in every way--has the right to end his pain and pass
through happy sleep to dreamless rest.

But those who have answered me would say to this man: "It is your
duty to be devoured. The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is
the gift of God. You hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it.
The cancer is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it with
food."

Take another case: A man is on a burning ship; the crew and the rest
of the passengers have escaped--gone in the lifeboats--and he is left
alone. In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help. He
cannot swim. If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the
ship he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments.

Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no circumstances
a man has the right to take his life, would say to this man on the deck,
"Remain where you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly father
that you be clothed in flame--that you slowly roast--that your eyes be
scorched to blindness and that you die insane with pain. Your life is
not your own, only the agony is yours."

I would say to this man: "Do as you wish. If you prefer drowning to
burning, leap into the sea. Between inevitable evils you have the right
of choice. You can help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to
be burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by choosing the
easier death."

Let us suppose another case.

A man has been captured by savages in central Africa. He is about to be
tortured to death. His captors are going to thrust splinters of pure
into his flesh and then set them on fire. He watches them as they make
the preparations. He knows what they are about to do and what he is
about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, of help. He has a vial of
poison. He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass beyond
their power, leaving to them only the dead body.

Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it until
the savages by torture take it? Are the savages the agents of the good
God? Are they the servants of the infinite? Is it the duty of this man
to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has he no right
to defend himself? Is it the will of God that he die by torture? What
would any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this? Is there
room for discussion?

If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped
the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another
world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?

Suppose another case. In the good old days, when the inquisition
flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends,
many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of
pain.

Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man
who had been convicted of heresy, "lay him upon the floor of a dungeon,
secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten trim to the earth so that
he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his
stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his
body. Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking
food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.

Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture had within his hand
a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one quick
stroke he found the protection of death?

To this question there can be but one answer.

In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have
the right to destroy himself. It does not seem possible that the man
was under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the
ship and perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to
death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the
church.

If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take their
lives, then I was right when I said that "under many circumstances a man
has a right to kill himself."

Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical
cowards. They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their
misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the
dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and
cannot be a physical coward.

The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and
when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die,
no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist.
The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very
thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.

So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a
coward, but a reasonable man. It must be admitted that the suicide is
honest with himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly
there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no physical
cowardice.

Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer
a coward?

Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is the
man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages or
"Christians" a coward?

Third, I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that they
acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession of
their minds.

Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right to take his life,
and if, under such circumstances, he does take his life, then it cannot
be said that he was insane.

Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground
that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it is
the greatest of crimes. Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must
have been sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal
admit that he was sane. Under the law, an insane person is incapable of
committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who have
passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that assertion
admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.

They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have
committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."

It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to
be true: First, that under some circumstances a man has the right to
take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a
physical coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide were
at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.

Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the
foundation of the Christian religion.

I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power to protect
Himself without injuring His assailants--that having that power it was
His duty to use it, and that failing to use it He consented to His own
death and was guilty of suicide. To this the clergy answer that it was
self-sacrifice for the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for
the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and atonement are
born of a belief in the "fall of man," on account of the sins of our
"first parents," and of the declaration that "without the shedding of
blood there is no remission of sin." The foundation has crumbled. No
intelligent person now believes in the "fall of man"--that our first
parents were perfect, and that their descendants grew worse and worse,
at least until the coming of Christ.

Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of
history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage,
whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and
delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not
all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the
home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries of
suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery,
invention, self-sacrifice and thought.

Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest. The
idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of
sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and
scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death that
He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the
consequences of His own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and
natural brain.

In no mythology can anything more monstrously Unbelievable be found.

But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of His times because
it was cruel and absurd; if He endeavored to found a religion of
kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and
ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what He believed to be right and
true; He suffered death, then He was a noble man--a benefactor of His
race. But if He were God there was no need of this. The Jews did not
wish to kill God. If He had only made himself known, all knees would
have touched the ground. If He were God it required no heroism to die.
He knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of
eternal life. If He were God, there was no self-sacrifice. He had no
need to suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.

Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from
these conclusions--from these arguments--and so, instead of attacking
the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.

Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to commit
suicide a crime.

It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately
longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished--helped rather
than imprisoned.

A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman
without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with
tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night
leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of death.
She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the
authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb and
locked in a felon's cell.

To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages would
enforce.

Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. For several
centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good
thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the
hour of death. They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the
great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy,
surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair. Think of the
thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies
of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes
from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last
sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks,
reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one
of the noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that
meets the morning.