The uses of life, both to ourselves, and to others through us, suffice, as we have said, to render its preservation a duty, enjoined upon us by the law of fitness. This duty is violated not only by suicide—against which it is useless to reason, for its victims in modern Christendom are seldom of sound mind—but equally by needless and wanton exposure to peril. Such exposure is frequently incurred in reckless feats of strength or daring, sometimes consummated in immediate death, and still oftener in slower self-destruction by disease. There are, no doubt, occasions when self-preservation must yield to a higher duty, and humanity has made no important stage of progress without the free sacrifice of many noble [pg 100] lives; but because it may be a duty to give life in the cause of truth or liberty, it by no means follows that one has a right to throw it away for the gratification of vanity, for a paltry wager, or to win the fame of an accomplished athlete.

The duty of self-preservation includes, of course, a reasonable care for health, without which the uses of life are essentially restricted and impaired. Here a just mean must be sought and adhered to. There is, on the one hand, an excessive care of the body, which, if it does not enfeeble the mind, distracts it from its true work, and makes the spiritual nature a mere slave of the material organism. This solicitude is sometimes so excessive as to defeat its own purpose, by creating imaginary diseases, and then making them real; and the number is by no means small of those who have become chronic invalids solely by the pains they have taken not to be so. On the other hand, there is a carelessness as to dress and diet, to which the strongest constitution must at length yield; and the intense consciousness of strength and vigor, which tempts one to deem himself invulnerable, not infrequently is the cause of life-long infirmity and disability. Of the cases of prolonged and enfeebling disease, probably more are the result of avoidable than of unavoidable causes, and if we add to these the numerous instances in which the failure of health is to be ascribed to hereditary causes which might have been avoided, or to defective sanitary arrangements that may be laid to the charge of the public, we have an [pg 101] enormous amount of serviceable life needlessly wasted for all purposes of active usefulness; while for the precious examples of patience, resignation, and cheerful endurance, the infirmities and sufferings incident to the most favorable sanitary conditions might have been amply sufficient.

There are, no doubt, such wide diversities of constitution and temperament that no specific rules of self-preservation can be laid down; and as regards diet, sleep, and exercise, habit may render the most unlike methods and times equally safe and beneficial. But wholesome food in moderate quantity, sleep long enough for rest and refreshment, exercise sufficient to neutralize the torpifying influence of sedentary pursuits, and these, though not with slavish uniformity, yet with a good degree of regularity, may be regarded as essential to a sound working condition of body and mind. The same may be said of the unstinted use of water, which has happily become a necessity of high civilization, of pure air, the worth of which as a sanitary agent is practically ignored by the major part of our community, and of the direct light of heaven, the exclusion of which from dwellings from motives of economy, while it may spare carpets and curtains, wilts and depresses their owners. These topics are inserted in a treatise on ethics, because whatever has a bearing on health, and thus on the capacity for usefulness selfward and manward which constitutes the whole value of this earthly life, is of grave moral significance. If the preservation of life is a duty, [pg 102] then all hygienic precautions and measures are duties, and as such they should be treated by the individual moral agent, by parents, guardians, and teachers, and by the public at large.

Self-preservation is endangered by poverty. In the lack or precariousness of the means of subsistence, the health of the body is liable to suffer; and even where there is not absolute want, but a condition straitened in the present and doubtful as to the future, the mind loses much of its working power, and life is deprived of a large portion of its utility. Hence the duty of industry and economy on the part of those dependent on their own exertions. It is not a man's duty to be rich, though he who in acquiring wealth takes upon himself its due obligations and responsibilities, is a public benefactor; but it is every man's duty to shun poverty, if he can, and he who makes or keeps himself poor by his own indolence, thriftlessness, or prodigality, commits a sin against his own life, which he curtails as to its capacity of good, and against society, which has a beneficial interest in the fully developed life of all its members.