If there are any of those horrible murders of kindred which sometimes occur even in well-regulated societies, and of which the legislator, however unwilling, cannot avoid taking cognizance, he will repeat the old myth of the divine vengeance against the perpetrators of such atrocities.

The myth will say that the murderer must suffer what he has done: if he have slain his father, he must be slain by his children; if his mother, he must become a woman and perish at the hands of his offspring in another age of the world.

Such a preamble may terrify him; but if, notwithstanding, in some evil hour he murders father or mother or brethren or children, the mode of proceeding shall be as follows:--Him who is convicted, the officers of the judges shall lead to a spot without the city where three ways meet, and there slay him and expose his body naked; and each of the magistrates shall cast a stone upon his head and justify the city, and he shall be thrown unburied beyond the border.

But what shall we say of him who takes the life which is dearest to him, that is to say, his own; and this not from any disgrace or calamity, but from cowardice and indolence?
The manner of his burial and the purification of his crime is a matter for God and the interpreters to decide and for his kinsmen to execute.

Let him, at any rate, be buried alone in some uncultivated and nameless spot, and be without name or monument.