A Custom of the Island of Cea

If it is to live well that we are to learn, then we must also learn to die well — and the question of whether we may choose the moment is not one that philosophy has ever settled to everyone’s satisfaction. On the island of Cea it was a custom, when a man was weighed down by great misfortune, disease, or age, to call together the citizens and explain to them why life had become a burden, and then, with their consent, to take the hemlock and end it. There was dignity in this: the man died as a citizen, in public, with full reason given. It was not the desperate act of a man fleeing from himself in the dark.

The Stoics made a great affair of the liberty to depart. They held that we are guests in life, not prisoners, and that when the inn becomes intolerable we are free to seek another lodging — or none at all. Seneca reasoned this way constantly, with that beautiful Latin that makes even desperation elegant. And it is true that nature has given us one liberty that cannot be taken from us: we can always leave. No tyrant, no disease, no misfortune can hold us entirely if the door is always there.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

And yet I am not certain. There is something that holds me back from full agreement with those who praise voluntary death too easily. It requires extraordinary circumstances — a courage of quite another kind than what sustains us in the common miseries of life. I have noticed that those who speak most readily of noble suicide are often those most attached to life, and who would find, at the fatal moment, a dozen reasons to delay. For my part, I believe that most of what we call unbearable is not, if we give it a little time. The body accommodates. The mind finds corners in which to shelter. I do not recommend endurance as a virtue above all others — but I note that it is easier to preach escape than to practice patience.