We had once the painful duty of watching the expiring struggles of a man whose life had been one long career of vice and debauchery. His death was truly appalling. It was evident, from the expressions which escaped him when dying, that his mind had a vivid conception of the scenes in which he had played so conspicuous a part. “Now for the dice!” he exclaimed, with the fury of a maniac. “That’s mine! No! all, all is gone! More wine, d—— you; more wine! Oh! how they rattle! Fiends, fiends, assail me! I say, you cheat! the cards are marked! Now the chains rattle! O death! O death!” and with a terrific groan he breathed his last.
Among the causes which operate in producing the disposition to commit suicide, we must not omit to mention those connected with erroneous religious notions. M. Falret justly remarks, that the religious system of the Druids, Odin, and Mahomet, by inspiring a contempt for death, have made many suicides. The man who believes that death is an eternal sleep, scorns to hold up against calamity, and prefers annihilation. The sceptic also often frees himself by self-destruction from the agony of doubting. The maxim of the Stoics, that man should live only so long as he ought, not so long as he is able, is, we may observe, the very parent of suicide. The Brahmin, looking on death as the very entrance into life, and thinking a natural death dishonourable, is eager at all times to get rid of life. The Epicureans and Peripatetics ridiculed suicide, as being death caused by fear of death. M. Falret, however, goes perhaps too far when he asserts that the noble manner in which the gladiators died in public, not only familiarized the Romans with death, but rendered the thoughts of it rather agreeable than otherwise.
Misinterpretations of passages of scripture will sometimes lead those who are piously inclined to commit suicide. M. Gillet hung himself at the age of seventy-five, having left in his own handwriting the following apology:—“Jesus Christ has said, that when a tree is old and can no longer bear fruit, it is good that it should be destroyed.” (He had more than once attempted his life before the fatal act.) Dr. Burrows attended a nobleman who, for fear of being poisoned, though he pretended it was in imitation of our Saviour’s fast, took nothing but strawberries and water for three weeks, and these in very moderate quantities. He never voluntarily abandoned his resolution. He was at length compelled to take some nutriment, but not until inanition had gone too far; and he died completely attenuated. When sound religious principles produce a struggle in the mind which is beginning to aberrate, the contest generally ends in suicide.
Some murder themselves to get rid of the horrid thoughts of suicide; whilst others brood over them like Rousseau, for months and for years, and at length perpetrate the very action which they dread. A countryman of Rousseau’s, who advocated suicide as a duty, and who spent the greater part of a long life in writing a large folio volume to prove the soundness of his doctrine, thought it his duty, after he had completed his work, to give a practical illustration of his principles, and, accordingly, at the age of seventy, threw himself into the Lake of Geneva, and was drowned.
It may appear strange that religion, the greatest blessing bestowed by Heaven on man, should ever prove a cause of one of his severest calamities. But perhaps it would be more accurate to impute such unhappy effects to fanaticism, or to the total want of religion.
Instances very frequently occur in practice in which patients have appeared, some suddenly, and others gradually, to be seized with a species of religious horror, despairing of salvation, asserting that they had committed sins which never could be forgiven, who had never previously appeared to be under religious impressions. Some of these have been visited by divines of various denominations, and been induced to hear sermons and read books well calculated to dispel gloomy apprehensions, and excite religious hope and confidence. With some this has succeeded, especially when conjoined with medical aid; but it has been observed, that in the cases of those who have recovered, the patients have emerged precisely as they immerged; for as they before were unconcerned about religious matters, so they remained after their recovery; thus the indisposition has been very erroneously imputed to religion when it has no kind of affinity to, or concern with it. Such cases almost invariably exhibit the same symptoms, which generally turn on these points—despair of temporal support, or despair of final salvation. But the medical practitioner, and not the divine, is the proper person to be consulted in such cases; and, however the mind may be affected in them, the patient is to be relieved by means of medicine. It may be added, that the agonies of mind under which some persons labour who are called fanatically mad arise from a sense of moral turpitude, independent of any peculiar religious tenets or opinions.
The true doctrines of Christianity, when properly inculcated, never excite a gloomy state of mind. “To be religious,” says South, “it is not necessary to be dull.” Cowper (perhaps, however, the most miserable and melancholy of men) beautifully says—
“True piety is cheerful as the day,
Will weep indeed, and heave a pitying groan,
For others’ woes, but smile upon her own.”