1818 Jan y 7

Not Paul

88

III Doctrine

Ch Asceticism

§ other checks

Suicide

Fortes ideo non sunt monomachi neque suicidæ―brave therefore is not the duellist nor

the suicide says an Ethical compend in which for the instruction of Academic youth

modern / scholastic / prejudices are engrafted in a summary of the text of

Aristotle. See Ethices

Compendium in usum Juventutis Academicæ, Oxford, 1745, p. 47: ‘ Fortes ideo non sunt Suicidæ …[n]eque

Monomachi’. Bentham used this elementary textbook on

moral philosophy as an undergraduate at Oxford in 1762: see Correspondence ( CW), i. 59-60 & n.

Brave are not the duellist or the suicide. Why not brave? exactly because for the

purpose of excluding the idea of bravery he has taken to fit up / get up / a

definition of his own―a definition such as agrees not with any conception which till

then had ever been associated with it.

Notable the contrivance; nor yet sparing the use. How oft has not this same

discovery been rediscovered! How many an elegant essay how many an edifying sermon

has been decorated by it: each time the penman paying himself for his labour with a

smile of self-complacency and congratulating himself on the felicity with which task

and genius have been employed in the service of piety and virtue.

Brave men? no: on the contrary cowards―real cowards both of them. How deplorably

universal till this discovery was made were men mistaken as to this point. Wherever

you see a man whom the world calls brave, be sure you see a coward. Behold that man

who without a chance of success is climbing up to that breach. Think how egregious

must be his cowardice. Wherefore is it that he mounts? Only because he has not the

fortitude to endure the reproach of cowardice.