The Will to Believe and Other Essays

“It ends soon, and never more can be,” “Lo, you are free to end it when you will,” — these verses flow truthfully from the melancholy Thomson’s pen, and are in truth a consolation for all to whom, as to him, the world is far more like a steady den of fear than a continual fountain of delight. That life is not worth living the whole army of suicides declare, — an army whose roll- call, like the famous evening gun of the British army, follows the sun round the world and never terminates. We, too, as we sit here in our comfort, must ‘ponder these things’ also, for we are of one substance with these suicides, and their life is the life we share. The plainest intellectual integrity, — nay, more, the simplest manliness and honor, forbid us to forget their case.