 The Right to Take One's Self Off from The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays by Ambrose Bierce This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Dale Grossman The Right to Take One's Self Off by Ambrose Bierce A person who loses heart and hope through a personal bereavement is like a grain of sand on the seashore, complaining that the tide has washed a neighboring grain of sand out of reach. He is worse, for the bereaved grain cannot help itself. It has to be a grain of sand and play the game of tide, win or lose, whereas he can quit. By watching his opportunity can quit a winner, for sometimes we do beat the man who keeps the table, never in the long run, but infrequently and out of small stakes. But this is no time to cash in and go, for you cannot take your little winnings with you. The time to quit is when you have lost a big stake, your full hope of eventual success, your fortitude and your love of the game. If you stay in the game, which you are not compelled to do, take your losses in good temper and do not whine about them. They are hard to bear, but that is no reason why you should be. But we are told with tiresome iteration that we are put here, for some purpose, not disclosed, and have no right to retire until summoned. It may be by smallpox, it may be by the bludgeon of a black guard, it may be by the kick of a cow, the summoning power, said to be the same as the pudding power, has not a nice taste in the choice of messengers. That argument is not worth attention, for it is unsupported by either evidence or anything remotely resembling evidence. Put here, indeed, and by the keeper of the table who runs the skin game. We were put here by our parents, that is all anybody knows about it, and they had no more authority than we, and probably no more intention. The notion that we have no right to take our own lives comes from our consciousness that we have not the courage. It is the plea of the coward, his excuse for continuing to live when he has nothing to live for or his provision against such a time in the future. If he were not egotist as well as coward, he would need no excuse. To one who does not regard himself as the center of creation and his sorrow as the throes of the universe, life, if not worth living, is also not worth leaving. The ancient philosopher, who was asked why he did not the if, as he taught, life was no better than death, replied, because death is no better than life. We do not know that either proposition is true, but the matter is not worth bothering about, for both states are supportable, life despite its pleasures, and death despite its repose. It was Robert G. Ingersoll's opinion that there is rather too little than too much suicide in the world, that people are so cowardly as to live on long after endurance has ceased to be a virtue. This view is but a return to the wisdom of the ancients in whose splendid civilization suicide was an honorable place as any other courageous, reasonable, and unselfish act. Anthony, Brutus, Cato, Seneca. These were not the kind of men to do deeds of cowardice and folly. The smug, self-righteous modern way of looking upon the act as that of a craven or a lunatic is the creation of priests, Philistines, and women. If courage is manifest in endurance of profitless discomfort, it is cowardice to warm oneself when cold, to cure oneself when ill, to drive away mosquitoes, to go in when it rains. The pursuit of happiness, then, is not an inalienable right, for that implies avoidance of pain. No principle is involved in this matter. Suicide is justifiable or not according to the circumstances. Each case is to be considered on its merits, and he having the act under advisement is the sole judge. To his decision, made with whatever light he may have chance to have, all honest minds will bow. The appellate has no court in which to take his appeal. Nowhere is a justification so comprehensive as to embrace the right of condemning the wretched to life. Suicide is always courageous. We call it courage in a soldier merely to face death, say to lead a forlorn hope, although he has a chance of life and a certainty of glory. But the suicide does more than face death, he incurs it, and with a certainty, not of glory, but of reproach. If that is not courage, we must reform our vocabulary. True, there may be a higher courage in living than in dying, a moral courage greater than physical. The courage of the suicide, like that of the pirate, is not incompatible with a selfish disregard of the rights and interests of others. A cruel requency to duty and decency. I have been asked, do you not think it cowardly that a man leaves his family unprovided for to end his life because he is dissatisfied with life in general? No, I do not. I think it's selfish and cruel. Is that not enough to say of it? Must we distort words from their true meaning in order more efficiently to dam the act and cover its author with the greater infamy? A word means something, despite the meanderings of the lexicographers. It does not mean whatever you want it to mean. Cowardice means the fear of danger, not the shirking of duty. The writer who allows himself as much liberty in the use of words as he is allowed by the dictionary maker and by popular consent is a bad writer. He can make no impression on his readers and would do better service at a ribbon counter. The ethics of suicide is not a simple matter. One cannot lay down laws of universal application, but each case is to be judged, if judged at all, with the full knowledge of all the circumstances, including the mental and moral makeup of the person taking his own life, an impossible qualification for judgment. One's time, race, and religion will have much to do with it. Some people, like the ancient Romans and the modern Japanese, have considered suicide in certain circumstances honorable and obligatory. Among ourselves it is held in disfavor. A man of sense will not give much attention to considerations of that kind, excepting as in so far they affect others, but in judging weak offenders they are to be taken into account. Speaking generally then, I should say that in our time and country the following persons, and some others, are justified in removing themselves, and that to some of them it is a duty. One affected with a painful or a loathsome and incurable disease. One who is in a heavy burden to his friends, with no prospect of their relief. One threatened with permanent insanity. One irreclaimably addicted to drunkenness or some similar destructive or offensive habit. One without friends, property, employment, or hope. One who has disgraced himself. Why do we honor the valiant soldier, sailor, or fireman? For obedience to duty? Not at all. That alone, without the peril, seldom elicits remark. Never evokes enthusiasm. It is because he faces without flinching the risk of that supreme disaster, or what we feel to be such, death. But, look you, the soldier braves the danger of death. The suicide braves death itself. The leader of the forlorn hope may not be struck. The sailor who voluntarily goes down with his ship may be picked up or cast ashore. It is not certain that the wall will topple until the fireman shall have descended with his precious burden. But the suicide, he is the foe man that never missed a mark. He is the sea that gives nothing back. The wall that he mounts bears no man's weight. And his, at the end of it all, is the dishonored grave where the wild ass of public opinion stamps or his head but cannot break his sleep. The end of The Right to Take One's Self Off by Ambrose Beers J. M. W. Turner's sketchbooks, a sampling from the life of J. M. W. Turner R. A. Founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and fellow academicians by Walter Thornbury, 1862. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. When Mr. Ruskin was arranging the Turner drawings, he kindly allowed me to examine the principal sketchbooks that the great artist had left behind. They were, of all ages, from the books of his earliest boyhood to the books of his latest tours. And here are a few of my notes upon them. In a little red book with a clasp, marked June, 1813, I found various scraps of notes about chemistry and several studies for pictures in rivalry of Claude, as usual, very slight. Some of the leaves are smeared by rubbing. The lines are blunt, soft pencil lines. The trees often loop, and some of the bows are mere lank fingers and dark zigzags. Yet, even in these, there is an implication of Turner's great qualities of multitude and distance. Occasionally, too, I came upon useful receipts, such as an experienced traveler would be likely to treasure. There is a receipt for making waterproof with linseed oil and gum elastic, and a prescription for the malty's plague, as if Turner's mind were tending eastward. The symptoms he writes are sickness, debility, shivering, headache, heat, and thirst. Then, delirium, dark spots, and ulcers. The remedies are ametics and purges, lemonade, and spongings with vinegar every two hours. The coarsest lines in the book seem, however, to be modified here and there to realize variety of expression. Then come indistinct verses, something about Anna's kiss, a look back, a toilsome dream, and human joy, ecstasy, and hope, etc. For Turner's verses did not come into shape at all spontaneously, and even at the anvil he was not quick at shaping them. Close by, there is a note of an order of Sir W. Pilkington's, for some harbors of the coast, and some Lieber Studiorum's. Next, I find some dancing nymphs and a clawed-like bridge. Then more chemistry, notes of copal and other varnishes. Then memoranda of anatole, turmeric, dragon's blood, and blues. Lastly, some very noteworthy nine pages about yellows, including orange oxide, naples yellow, and paper makers yellow. Finally, the following scrap I think from Beckman. Potash added to a solution of iron, a brown precipitate falls, carbonate of potash separates, and yellow oxide, which soon becomes a beautiful yellow oxide. The next notebook I examined was a long one covered with parchment and full of beautiful studies of skies stored up for use. There were skies of an orange-purple, skies webbed with gray showers, skies veined with cross currents of interwoven azure, skies of gorgeous red and yellow, skies of transparent gray, blue fogs with looming red suns, red horizons, moons going down, and blood-red treble meteors. And lastly, a glimpse of London with St. Clement's Church indicated by a pencil note. A third book, bound in the cover of a Bible, was full of pencil sketches from Coutance. In one leaf a plot is inscribed, sunshine, and another yellowish gray. The distance in one case is marked with dotted lines, and there are notes of leaves, docks, and rush flowers with their curves and central ribs marked. The verses in this volume turn chiefly on content, and are either vague or pathetic, as thus on scotch independence, a personal estate far beyond purchase, or the grasp of state. Thou give us the humble roof content devoid of fear, and blissful joy to its perhaps lone inmate. Another book contained colored studies for the north coasts and the harbors of England, and compositions in the manner of Claude. The run of the waves and their sweeping leaps are beautifully given in these sketches, but sometimes the shore is left weak, and the sky is finished as being, I suppose, more difficult for the artist to remember. Sometimes hard, dark ridges of color are left to mark the crest of the waves. The seas are of all colors, from dull gray-green to soft blue and almost indigo darkness. In one instance a sail in the foreground has the yellow jewel depth of the finest Kurgorum pebble. I find Dover and Portsmouth among the places sketched. Only the artist seems lazy or self-confident, for there are merely red blots or crisscrosses of gray. In one instance there is more foam than wave, visible, and I remember a beautiful example of the yellow ghost of a fishing boat with a little red man in it. There are other sketches in which the sea rages in the foreground, rolling and leaping, while in the blue distance you see the faint outlines of white chalk cliffs. In the next book we break away from English seas and go sketching in imitation and in rivalry of Claude, Turner's great opponent with nobleman and art collectors. In this book I found recumbent nymphs, receding arcades, vanishing in perspective, long flights of temple steps, forests of masts, forming classical St. Catherine's docks, vet champette after Watteau and Stotherd, arches of Constantine, and acropluses crowning imaginary hills. A book dated 1809 contains notes on the passage of the Simplon, the wonderful gorge of Gondo, Anisola Bela, and hints of the Lago Maggiore. They are untinted paper, which is often used on both sides with an economy worthy of pope. White chalk that still lingers in dust between the leaves marks avalanches and snow effects, and Gondo, especially studded, is outlined with all a map-makers care and fidelity. There are Italian campaniles without end for future use, and gaps between rocks opening out from sunshine into dim whiteness. There are small drawings in mere portions of a page of the Simplon bridges, such as Turner may afterwards have used for Scott's life of Napoleon. There are scraps of bad French, and in one place two English are mentioned. In a green book with red back I found Memoranda of Seaside Houses at Brighton, of embattled towers and Tudor windows, and some miscellaneous seaside effects, very subtle and beautiful in their care and truth. There is a camp on a cliff, and boys and boats innumerable. Among the more subtle thoughts I found the following noted. Foam gray in shadow, the reflection of a bright colored boat on a wet, shiny wall, the reflection of a fisherman's boy form on a done sail, and the interchange of reflections between white and umbery sails. Another sketchbook is valuable for its containing studies of the nude figure made in the Academy Life School, apparently in his middle life, and probably for special objects. Some of these studies are sufficient in themselves to remove the slander that Turner, when he chose, and before his mind began to weaken, could not draw. But still, in many of them there is certainly an appearance of labor, though they are all rather painted than drawn. In one case the mouth is left unfinished, and in several others the faces are spoiled. Among these studies I found a female figure drawing a sword, the whole drawn with yellow and black chalk, and a figure seated on a rock, cleverly and sharply delineated. The highlight especially powerfully touched. Then there are several studies of a female figure as Andromeda, with her head hanging down and her arms up. There is a side view, a front view, and a back view. Some of the leaves are purposely reddened. In a book containing a sketch of Carnovan Castle, I found a pen outline and many boat effects, smoke rising against sails, and sails cutting against white, yellow chalk suns. Of all Turner's sketchbooks that I saw, I think none interested me more than one full of sketches made at Rome, and chiefly in the Vatican galleries. They show the intense delight the artist must have felt in the classic city, where he found on every hand ample materials for the war he was ever carrying on with Claude. What he had so long only dreamt of, now he saw, he now could realize the visions of his school days, of those hours spent in academic and architectural study. His comprehensive mind filled itself with booty. His great memory stored itself with facts. His notebooks are gorged with classical detail, with drawings of statues, bar reliefs, and inscriptions to be used hereafter in the foregrounds of classical pictures. That greedy accumulativeness that made Turner amass money made him also, in his intellectual tendency, accumulate facts. He could not refrain from taking ten or twelve views of London Bridge. It was a pain to him to have to break his charitable store by giving away a shilling uselessly. Such are the inconsistencies of man. Under notes of my locanda, the Speranzella strata, Speranzella, and directions of the Corona Giferro, or somewhere where an English waiter is to be found, most important to the non-Italian, I find addresses of friends, as Captain Graham, via Gregoriana, and lastly, after the proper Italian sentences to address to the custodes of picture galleries, what can I see in this palace, and a caricature of himself, I come to studies of the Campania, of the aqueducts, and the Alban Hills. But besides this, I found a legion of classic ornaments from the Vatican, drawn hastily in pencil, generally only a part finished from one of time, but the part finished, always sufficient for the painter's use, and generally numbered, so as to be able to find it again. Among the objects selected, I found priapi, sadders, vases, griffins, baccant, sippy, tombs, masks, leafage, apolino, psyche, female heads, and many inscriptions, copied carefully in printed letters. I also found a few notes on pictures and statues, with sometimes remarks on colors. In one instance, Turner's mind seemed to have turned to architectural reflections. He says, sensibly, of St. Peter's, The part by Bernini is good in the arrangement of the columns, but being very large, they convey the idea of greatness away from the façade of the building. While in the upper corner, the most favorable view, the columns are cut by it, and the cupola has no base, so that the dome, when approaching the steps, becomes secondary to the horizontal parts, etc. The next notebook I met with contained notes of a sea journey between Marseille and Genoa. There was the Isle Margart, and Tibbys and Nice, boats with Lantine sails, and sketches of Genoa. After this I came upon one with drawings of London Bridge, interesting Indian ink skies, and notes of scenes on the banks of the Thames, studies of sails, and memoranda of a fake champette, and of ladies' dress, caps, sleeves, black bow, black bodice, grey body, and yellow band. This book is full of details of form and color, water carts, haymakers, boys wading round boats, fishermen making love, travelling gypsies in red cloaks, green lanes and poplars sunlit that shed radiance like lighted tapers. Here and there are bursts of wood nymphs and other classical furniture, but the most important and laborious efforts in the book are views of London Bridge with St. Paul's and the Monument showing at various experimental distances. Now he tries the dome over the widest arch. Now he crowds the balustrades with people, and introduces a hulk, barges, and the boats at the tower's stairs. Now he brings in bales for composition, and detains passing sails to break the lines of the arches, or to vary their outline. Now he comes nearer and tries a wharf, a tower, some additional roofs, or a dark steeple, striping the light. Still he seems unsatisfied. Either his acquisitiveness could never have enough views of a bridge that publishers and engravers often want plates of, or else he cannot get the bridge to look quite as beautiful as he could wish it to look. He changes the boats. He lifts St. Paul's to try it in all sorts of combinations. He moves the wharfs, the shot tower, yet nothing seems to satisfy him, so greedy is he of all its possible variations. The next book contains jottings of expenses and sketches of classical subjects, Glaucus and Scylla, Daito and Ineus, Ulysses and Darius, and a sketch of the Polyphemus with the giant hurling the stone. Sometimes in these books we come upon a flood of sea sketches and shore studies, fish being packed or sold, steamers, notes of the moon's colors, slight sketches in color, the tones sometimes touched in with colored chalk, lightning, dismantled vessels, vermilion suns and indigo seas, waves spitting round piles or combing upon the shore, lifeboats, in fact all that could indicate a passionate observer and lover of the sea. Then perhaps come Roman details and a list of Lord Egremont's pictures, then warm, cold, gray skies and Naples yellow suns. In a book containing notes of Gothic ornaments from Yorkminster, the internal anatomy of a boat, and some pencil skies marked W. Turner, 64 Harley Street, I found some verses on love, which show that the heartache of earlier youth had not yet quite gone. The verses are, Man like the easy bark which sailing on the treacherous sea, seeking the bubble pleasure, and again, cares like waves in fell succession, frown destruction or his day, which I take to be very incoherent utterances of a great heart sorrow. End of J. M. W. Turner's sketchbooks, a sampling from The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A., founded on letters and papers furnished by his friends and fellow academicians by Walter Thornbury, 1862. Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson