Logic

Yes, I agree with you. Sometimes you do need to put your emotions aside and just think logically. I was disagreeing with those philosophers who believed in giving up emotions entirely, which I do not think is best, at least for me. I would hate never being able to be in a euphoric state of glee, or cry until I can cry no more. Balance in emotion, balance in logic, "Everything in moderation", that's my motto. But even moderation has it's moderation! Lol.

I don't think suicide is beautiful in the way many people commonly use the term beautiful. "You look so beautiful tonight," or "The garden is so beautiful." It's more beautiful in the kind of beauty that is tragic. Tragic beauty, you could say. It's so sad and it brings up such an emotion in you that it is beautiful in it's own way. And also it's more of the way that Werther describes it that is beautiful. Perhaps I can find the passage where Werther yells at Albert for condemning suicide . . . *searches through book* . . . let's see, where was it? Ah, it was when Werther picks up Albert's unloaded gun (yes, he knows it's unloaded) and puts it to his head. Here it is!!

"'Shame on you!' Albert said, as he forced my hand down. 'What on earth is the meaning of this?'

'It isn't loaded.' I said.

'Even so . . . what was going on in your mind?' He sounded impatient. 'I simply cannot imagine how a man could be so foolish as to shoot himself. The very idea disgusts me.'

'Oh you people,' I cried, 'who, when you talk about anything must immediately declare: that is foolish, that is clever, that is good, that is bad! And what does it all amount to? Do you think you can uncover the vital circumstances of an action with your questions? Are you sure you know how to get at the heart of the matter: why did it happen? Why did it have to happen? If you were, you wouldn't be so hasty with your decisions.'

'You will grant me, I am sure,' Albert said, 'that certain actions are vicious whatever the reason may be.'

I shrugged and had to agree with him. 'And yet, my dear fellow,' I went on, 'here too you will find your exceptions. To steal is a sin, true, but the poor man who steals to save himself and his dear ones from starvation, what does he deserve? Pity or punishment? Who will cast the fist stone against the married man who, in his first fury, murders his faithless wife and her vile seducer? And what about the young girl who in a blissful hour loses herself in the irresistible delights of love? Even our laws, cold-blooded and pedantic as they are, can be moved to withhold punishment.'

'That is something quite different,' said Albert. 'A man who lets himself be overwhelmed by passion can be considered out of his mind, and is treated like a drunkard or a madman.'

'Oh you sensible people!' I cried, but I was smiling. 'Passion. Inebriation. Madness. You respectable ones stand there so calmly, without any sense of participation. Upbraid the drunkard, abhor the madman, pass them by like the priest and thank God like the Pharisees that He did not make you as one of these! I have been drunk more than once, and my passion often borders on madness, and I regret neither. Because, in my own way, I have learned to understand that all exceptional people who created something great, something that seemed impossible, have to be decried as drunkards or madmen. And I find it intolerable even in our daily life, to hear it said of almost everyone who manages to do something that is free, noble and unexpected: He is a drunkard, he is a fool. They should be ashamed of themselves, all these sober people! And the wise ones!'

'Now you are being fanciful again,' Albert said. 'You always exaggerate, and you are certainly wrong when you classify suicide - and suicide is what we are talking about - as any sort of great achievement, since it can be defined only as a sign of weakness. For it is certainly easier to die than to stand up to a life of torment.'

I was about to break off the conversation, for nothing can so completely disconcert me as when a man presents me, who am talking from my heart, with an insignificant platitude. But I controlled myself because I had heard the same thing so often and let it vex me. Instead I said, with quite some vehemence, 'You call it weakness? I beg of you, don't let yourself be mislead by appearances. Would you call a nation groaning under the unbearable yoke of a tyrant weak if it revolts and breaks its chains? Or the man who, in his horror because his house is afire, musters sufficient strength to carry off burdens which he could scarcely have budged when he was calm? Or the man who, enraged by insults, takes on six men and overpowers them? Would you call this man weak? And if exertion is strength, why should exaggeration be the opposite?'" pgs. 59 - 61 Signet Classic Edition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther

I'll continue this another time, but Werther goes on to give several examples of suicides that he has heard of, and explains why committing suicide was not necessarily wrong in these cases. He sees that Albert doesn't understand, so he finally ends the conversation and goes home.