IN previous chapters we have discussed the moral valuation of acts, forbearances, and omissions, which directly concern the interests of other men; we shall now proceed to consider moral ideas regarding such modes of conduct as chiefly concern a man’s own welfare. Among these we notice, in the first place, acts affecting his existence.
Suicide, or intentional self-destruction, has often been represented as a fruit of a higher civilisation; Dr. Steinmetz, on the other hand, in his essay on ‘Suicide among Primitive Peoples,’ thinks it probable that “there is a greater propensity to suicide among savage than among civilised peoples.”[1] The former view is obviously erroneous; the latter probably holds good of certain savages as compared with certain peoples of culture, but cannot claim general validity.
[1] Steinmetz, ‘Suicide among Primitive Peoples,’ in American Anthropologist, vii. 60.
Among several uncivilised races suicide is said to be unknown.[2] To these belong some of the lower savages—the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego,[3] the Andaman Islanders,[4] and various Australian tribes;[5] whilst as regards most other tribes at about the same stage of culture information seems to be wanting. Of the natives in Western and Central Australia Sir G. Grey writes, “Whenever I have interrogated them on this point, they have invariably laughed at me, and treated my question as a joke.”[6] When a Caroline Islander was told of suicides committed by Europeans, he thought that he had not grasped what was said to him, as he never in his life had heard of anything so ridiculous.[7] The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, though they have no intense fear of death, cannot understand suicide; “the idea of a man killing himself strikes them as inexplicable.”[8]
[2] Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nord-ost-Afrikas, p. 205 (Danakil and Galla). Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 532 (Barea and Kunáma). New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 99 (Wanika). Felkin, ‘Notes on the For Tribe of Central Africa,’ in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 231. Lumholtz (Unknown Mexico, i. 243) thinks it is doubtful whether a pagan Tarahumare ever killed himself.
[3] Bridge, in South American Missionary Magazine, xiii. 211.
[4] Man, Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 111.
[5] Grey, Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 248. Curr, Recollections of Squatting in Victoria, p. 277 (Bangerang). Among the tribes of Western Victoria described by Mr. Dawson (Australian Aborigines, p. 62) suicide is not unknown, though it is uncommon; “if a native wishes to die, and cannot get any one to kill him, he will sometimes put himself in the way of a venomous snake, that he may be bitten by it.”
[6] Grey, op. cit. ii. 248.
[7] von Kotzebue, Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea, iii. 195.