In fact, this is the natural
and practical judgment of us all. We do not all agree on the particular
cases which will justify self-destruction: but we all feel and
involuntarily acknowledge (_implicitly_ acknowledge in our admiration,
though not explicitly in our words or in our principles), that there _are_
such cases. There is no man, who in his heart would not reverence a woman
that chose to die rather than to be dishonored: and, if we do not say,
that it is her duty to do so, _that_ is because the moralist must
condescend to the weakness and infirmities of human nature: mean and
ignoble natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble ones. Again,
with regard to the other sex, corporal punishment is its peculiar and
_sexual_ degradation; and if ever the distinction of Donne can be applied
safely to any case, it will be to the case of him who chooses to die
rather than to submit to that ignominy. _At present_, however, there is
but a dim and very confined sense, even amongst enlightened men (as we may
see by the debates of Parliament), of the injury which is done to human
nature by giving legal sanction to such brutalizing acts; and therefore
most men, in seeking to escape it, would be merely shrinking from a
_personal_ dishonor. Corporal punishment is usually argued with a single
reference to the case of him who suffers it; and _so_ argued, God knows
that it is worthy of all abhorrence: but the weightiest argument against
it--is the foul indignity which is offered to our common nature lodged in
the person of him on whom it is inflicted.
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