A diseased temperament, a serious lesion of one or more of the viscera, a gradual exhaustion of the energies of the system, may so aggravate the miseries of life as to hasten the period of voluntary death. But how are we to account for the irresistible propensity to suicide which sometimes exists, independent of any apparent mental or physical ailments? A melancholic, whose case was published in Fourcroy’s Medical Journal of 1792, once said, “I am in prosperous circumstances; I have a wife and a child who constitute my happiness; I cannot complain of bad health, and still I feel a horrible propensity to throw myself into the Seine.” His declaration was too fatally verified in the event. Crichton was once consulted upon the case of a young man, twenty-four years of age, in full vigour and health, who was tormented by periodical accessions of these gloomy feelings and propensities. At those times he meditated his own destruction. But on a nearer view of the fatal act, he shrunk back into himself, and recoiled with horror from its execution. Without relinquishing his project, he never had the courage to accomplish it. “It is in cases like these,” says Crichton, “that energetic measures of coercion, and the effectual excitement of terror, should lend their aid to the powers of medicine and regimen.”
In many cases of suicide, the act is preceded by a long train of perverted reasoning. These individuals become taciturn, morose, pusillanimous, and distrustful. The future presents itself to their view under the most unfavourable aspect, and despair becomes painted on their countenances. Their eyes become hollow; they complain of sleeplessness, and are disturbed by frightful dreams. The bowels are in an inactive state; the functions of the liver become to a certain extent suspended. It is in this state that they contemplate the idea of suicide; and the diaries which some have kept of their sensations and thoughts disclose the various kinds of death which they have contemplated and rejected, one after another, often for reasons the most preposterous and ridiculous. It is singular that in these journals they generally endeavour to hide their despondency and their mental aberration, while their moral and intellectual weakness is sure to be betrayed. They often accuse themselves of insanity, and bewail their unhappy lot; others argue most ingeniously in favour of their meditated suicide. Others again, subdued as it were by the force of the moral and religious principles which they have imbibed, represent to themselves that the act they contemplate is contrary to the moral end for which man was created—fatal to the welfare and happiness of their families. Then ensues a conflict in their breasts. If reason and religion prevail, the project is abandoned,—sometimes abandoned altogether. If otherwise, the suicide is committed. Falret knew the case of a woman who exhibited a tendency to suicide, but who was delivered for a period from the commission of the crime by the principles of religion in which her mind had been educated. A long period elapsed before she could reconcile herself to the act of suicide, and then she argued herself into it by the following piece of sophistry:—“There are no general rules without exceptions; and I am the precise exception in this case: therefore I may commit suicide without violating my religious principles.”
Having once conceived the idea of suicide, the mind is often rendered so miserable in consequence of it, that the person rushes into the arms of death in order to escape from the terrible state of anticipation. Others meditate on the bloody deed for years. Rousseau, after drawing a piteous portrait of his proscribed and solitary condition, and of the state of his health, adds, “Puisque mon corps n’est plus pour moi qu’un embarras, un obstacle à mon repos, cherchons donc à m’en degager le plus tôt que je pourrai.”
Tedium vitæ, or ennui, is said to be a frequent cause of suicide. We have heard of an Englishman who hanged himself in order to avoid the trouble of pulling off and on his clothes. Goëthe knew a gardener, and the overseer of some extensive pleasure-grounds, who once splenetically exclaimed, “Shall I see these clouds for ever passing, then, from east to west?” So singularly developed was this weariness of life, this feeling of satiety, in one of our distinguished men, that it is said of him that he viewed with dissatisfaction the return of spring, and wished, by way of change, that everything would, for once, be red instead of green.[32]
“—— Within that ample nich,
With every quaint device of splendour rich,
Yon phantom, who, from vulgar eyes withdrawn,
Appears to stretch in one eternal yawn:
Of empire here he holds the tottering helm,
Prime-minister in Spleen’s discordant realm,