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PERSONAL DUTIES.

[Pakt IV.

when compared with all others committed to us, is a position toomanifest to require illustration, much less, argument. Life andhealth, then, still more than the other talents which we enjoy, areto be regarded as treasures intrusted to our keeping by the Al-mighty, to be used for our own good and the good of our fellow-men.

By the duty of preserving life and health, therefore, I meanmuch more than abstaining from positive and known injury toeither. Health may be ruined, and even life may be lost, byneglect as well as by positive injury. Not only so ; a personmay pursue a course, undeniably calculated to impair his healthand shorten his life. Moreover, the duty to preserve life andhealth includes the duty of using the means of preserving them,such as temperance, exercise, cheerfulness of mind, and whateverelse conduces to prolong life and preserve health. On this sub-ject, I may quote the advice of Cicero, which seems to me tocomprise the substance of entire volumes. “ Health is pre-served,” says he, “ by a knowledge of one’s constitution ( no-titia, sui corporis ), and by observing what things and circum-stances benefit, and what injure it, by temperance and modera-tion in meats and drinks, by forbearance and abstinence fromhurtful pleasures and every kind of excess ; and, when all thesemeans fail, by the use of medicine and the skill of physicians.*

This duty, imperative on all men, to preserve life and health,and to use all the means known to conduce to this end, enablesme to approach, with advantage, the discussion of the difficultand important subject of suicide, which was esteemed proper,lawful, and even heroic, by the ancient sect of the Stoics ; andhas sometimes been defended, as well as frequently practised,in modern times. Dr. Smith affirms, that the lawfulness andpropriety of suicide was a doctrine common to all the sects ofancient philosophers; and he has ingeniously, if not satisfactorily,traced the prevalence of this doctrine among the Greeks, to thehabitual state of public affairs in that country.f It is true thatthe case of Cato, called by Dr. Smith, “ the venerable martyrof the republican party,” was excused (not commended , as he

De Officiis, Lib. II.c.24. t Theory of Moral Sentiments, Vol. II. pp. 78 - 80.