yesterdaysprint:

Oakland Tribune, California, February 26, 1922

I wasn’t going to post this because the clippings are a bit all over the page and so the colours don’t match up, it’s long and it’s messy, but I thought her answer was so well spoken (and also very different for the time, suicide was viewed so censoriously, and with so little compassion, the mere thought of it was, of course, blasphemous) ..

This is my answer: If I believed that our lives were our own to do with as we chose I WOULD BELIEVE IN SUICIDE. If I believed that we belonged merely to the small set of those we knew and loved, and were needed simply for that work which we could see and measure, I WOULD BELIEVE IN SUICIDE, for the bonds holding me here would seem too trivial to outweigh that vast hunger to be gone. But I do NOT believe our lives are our own to do with as we choose or that my service is to be measured by that work for which I receive payment in money or affection from a limited circle.

I do NOT believe that Life is an ingenious biological performance whose highest goal is the evolution of pollywogs, a performance which can be sidestepped at will by individual tadpoles by the means of suicide. Biology is a great and marvelous science, but there are things in the human soul too vast for its encompassing. Biology can’t explain to me the handclasp of a friend - the patience and heroism of a mother - the sacrifices of a father. Biology can’t explain humor and honor, loyalty, sympathy, or those far calls that sometimes echo through the little rooms of our spirit and leave us homesick for a freer, more glorious house of life. You may frown or sneer and tell me that all these impulses and motives are but part of the biological plan by which we grow. EVEN IF THAT WERE SO, A PLAN WHICH HOLDS SUCH BEAUTY AND DIGNITY IS SURELY TOO GREAT FOR ME TO CAST OFF WITH A SNAP OF MY FINGERS. But I do not believe it is so. I think that Biology is only one of the means to the End. I believe that Life is a stupendous program which aims at something infinitely greater than the evolution of the human body or the human mind. I believe that it is a program WHICH AIMS TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND AFTER THEY ARE EVOLVED. I think that every individual act of beauty or bravery is a step towards that fulfillment of life. And so, though I live for such a little space and suffer so much while I do live, I feel that I am “honor bound” to do what I can to make good and that everything I can do has tremendous importance because of its relationship to the universal good.

THAT’S WHY I DO NOT BELIEVE IN SUICIDE. The man who steps out that way may not be a coward. Often, indeed, he is a brave and knightly soul. I would not, by any word, censure him nor hold him up as an example. But from my own viewpoint, taking all possible pain into the reckoning, he chose the lesser adventure.