or by an open attack, to slay the murderer of his relative, and he is highly applauded when he has accomplished this pious deed. It must be appreciated that he is regarded as herein directed and inspired by the dead man who returns from his grave as a vampire craving for blood. Even if no other motive or incentive prevailed, in spite of natural shrinking and may be even cowardice, a man would undoubtedly prefer to shed blood for blood, especially when this might be done in secrecy or by craft, rather than run the terrible risk of himself becoming a vampire, finding no rest in the grave, but returning to haunt and persecute even those who were most dear to him, an unclean thing accursed of God, a foul goblin of dread most hateful to man.
So great is the horror which the act of suicide, although considered admirable in the decadence of Greece and Rome, inspires in every man of sane mind that it is not at all surprising it should be deemed that the unfortunate wretches who have destroyed themselves become vampires after death. According to the Zoroastrian creed, suicide is a most fearful crime, and is classed among the marg-arzan, the abominable offences. Aristotle in his Ethics, V, xv, terms suicide a sin against the State, and as Cicero tells us Pythagoras forbade men to depart from their guard or sentry-go in life without an order from their commanding-officer, who is God. “Uetatque Pythagoras iniussu imperatoris, id est, dei, de praesidio et statione uitae decedere.” (De Senectute, XX, 73). The highest pagan argument against suicide will be found in Plato’s Phaedo (61E–62E), but it is drowned in the mighty voice of the great Saint of Hippo, which peals in no unwavering tones down the centuries: “For if it be not lawful for a private man to kill any man, however guilty, unless the law have granted a special allowance for it, then surely whosoever kills himself is guilty of homicide: and so much the more guilty doth that killing of himself make himself, by how much the more guiltless he was in that cause for which he killed himself. For if the act of Judas be worthily detested, and yet the Truth saith, that by hanging of himself, he did rather augment than expiate the guilt of his wicked treachery, because his despair of God’s mercy in his damnable repentance, left no place in his soul for saving repentance; how much more ought he to
