Suicide Is Unlawful, for Affliction Is a Karmic Necessity

Olympiodorus the Younger, Thomas Taylor, H.P. Blavatsky · Constitution of Man Series · 23 pages

A careful treatment of a hard question, and one that resists the flat answer in either direction. Thomas Taylor's summary sets the frame at the head: when a worthy man is placed in difficult circumstances that do not prevent him energising intellectually, it is not lawful for him to commit suicide, for the affliction is from Divinity and is analogous to a father castigating a son — everything afflictive in life either exercising, correcting or punishing, and the most worthy men sometimes requiring severe endurance for the health of their souls as athletes require exercise for their bodies.

The first half is Olympiodorus the Younger on the Phaedo and on Ennead I.ix: that he who expels the soul from the body is not liberated from passion but under the influence of some torment, pain or anger; and the distinction the whole file turns on — that suicide is unlawful when committed for the sake of the body, but rational when committed for the sake of the soul. His five circumstances in which a banquet may properly be dissolved are given as the analogy for when a life may be. The second half is Taylor's own notes on the Phaedo, including the Orphic argument that suicide is not lawful because our body is Dionysiacal: we are a part of Bacchus if we are composed from the ashes of the Titans who tasted his flesh, Bacchus being the monad of the Titans.

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