When the thermometer of Fahrenheit ranges from 80° to 90° suicide is most prevalent.
The English have been accused by foreigners of being the beau-ideal of a suicidal people. The charge is almost too ridiculous to merit serious refutation. It has clearly been established that where there is one suicide in London, there are five in Paris. In the year 1810, the number of suicides committed in London amounted to 188; the population of Paris being near 400,000 less than that of London. From the year 1827 to 1830, no less than 6900 suicides occurred; that is, an average of nearly 1800 per annum. Out of 120,000 persons who ensured their lives in the London Equitable Insurance Company, the number of suicides in twenty years was only fifteen; so much for the English being par excellence disposed to suicide.
The causes which frequently lead to self-destruction in France are, defective religious education, ennui, and loss at dice or cards. In considering the circumstances which produce this disparity in the number of voluntary deaths in the two countries, we must bear in mind the moral and religious habits of the people. When Christianity is not acknowledged as a matter of vital importance in the affairs of man; when morality is considered only as a conventional term, conveying no definite idea to the mind, it is natural that there should exist, co-relative with this tone of feeling, a marked recklessness of human life. Some notion may be formed of the state of religious feeling in Paris, when our readers are informed of the existence in the French metropolis of a “society for the mutual encouragement of suicide,” all the members of which, on joining it, swear to terminate their existence by their own hands, when life becomes insupportable.
Dr. Schlegel dwells at much length on the abandoned state of Paris, and after giving us some important statistical evidence, he alludes to the gross immorality of the people, and denounces the French capital as “a suffocating boiling cauldron, in which, as in the stew of Macbeth’s witches, there simmer, with a modicum of virtue, all kinds of passions, vices, and crimes.”
Alluding to the peculiarities of the French people, particularly their indifference to human life, an eminent writer observes, speaking of their notions of suicide, that a Frenchman asks you to see him “go off,” as if death were a place in the malle poste. “Will you dine with me to-day?” said a Frenchman to a friend. “With the greatest pleasure;—yet, now I think of it, I am particularly engaged to shoot myself; one cannot get off such an engagement.” This is not the suicide à la mode with us. We ape at no such extra civilization and refinement. We can be romantic without blowing out our brains. English lovers do not, when “the course of true love” does not run smooth, retire to some sequestered spot, and rush into the next world by a brace of pistols tied with cherry-coloured ribbons. When we do shoot ourselves, it is done with true English gravity. It is no joke with us. We have no inherent predilection for the act; no “hereditary imperfection of the nervous juices,” as Montesquieu, with all the impudence and gravity of a philosopher, asserts, forcing us to commit suicide. “Life,” said a man who had exhausted all his external sources of enjoyment, and had no internal ones to fly to, “has given me a headache; and I want a good sleep in the churchyard to set me to rights,” to procure which, he deliberately shot himself.[45]
A late French writer thus attempts to account for the prevalence of suicide in France:—“The external circumstances which tend to suggest the idea of suicide are very numerous, at the present day, in France; but more particularly so in the capital. The high development of civilization and refinement which prevails here—the clash of interests—the repeated political changes—all contribute to keep the moral feelings in a perpetual state of tension. Life does not roll on among us in a peaceful and steady current; it rushes forward with the force and precipitation of a torrent. In the terrible mêlée, it often happens that the little minority, which has obtained a footing high above the multitude for a time, falls down as suddenly as they have risen. The struggles of life are full of miscalculations, disappointments, despair, and disgust. Hence the general source of our frequent suicides. But there are other causes in operation; and not the least, the strange turn that plays and spectacles have lately taken. The public taste has undergone a complete revolution in this respect. Nothing is more patronized now at the theatre than the display of crime unpunished, human misery unconsoled, and a low literature, impregnated by a spurious philosophy, declaiming against society, against domestic life, against virtue itself; applauding the vengeance of the assassin, and recognising genius only as it is seen in company with spleen, poison, and pistols. We appeal to all who read the novels of the present day, and who visit the theatres, whether what we say is not the fact.”
It has been questioned whether physical suffering often originates the desire for suicide. Too many lamentable cases are on record to prevent us from coming to an opposite conclusion. Esquirol has justly observed, that “He who has no intervals of ease from corporeal pain; who sees no prospects of relief from his cruel malady, fails at length in resignation, and destroys his life in order to put a period to his sufferings. He calculates that the pain of dying is but momentary, and commits the act in a cool and meditated despair. It is the same in respect to moral condition, that drives the hypochondriac to suicide, who is firmly persuaded that his sufferings are beyond imagining; that they are irremediable, either from some fatal peculiarity in his own constitution, or the ignorance of his physicians. It is a remarkable feature in hypochondriasis, and in no other disease, that there is such a fear of death and a desire to die combined. Both fears proceed from the same pusillanimity. Finally, it may be remarked that the hypochondriac talks most of death; often wishes his attendants to perform the friendly office; even makes attempts on his own life, but rarely accomplishes the act. The most trifling motive, the most frivolous pretext, is a sufficient excuse for procrastinating, from day to day, the threatened catastrophe.”
The following case occurred in a provincial mad-house, in France. An apothecary who was confined there was haunted with ennui, and was always begging his companions to put him to death. At length, an insane patient was admitted, who instantly complied with the apothecary’s request. They both watched an opportunity, got out of a window in the back yard, and from thence into the kitchen. They pitched upon the cook’s chopper, and the apothecary laying his head on a block, his companion deliberately and effectually severed it from his body. He was seized, and examined before a tribunal, where he candidly confessed the whole transaction, and observed that he would again perform the same friendly office for any unhappy wretch who was tired of his existence![46]
Lucinius Cæcinius, the prætor, subdued by the pain and ennui of a tedious disease, swallowed opium. Dr. Haslam relates the case of a gentleman who destroyed himself to avoid the tortures of the gout. It is recorded that the pain of the same disease drove Servius the grammarian to take poison. Pliny informs us that one of his friends, Corellius Rufus, having in vain sought relief from the pangs of a disease under which he was labouring, starved himself to death at the age of sixty-seven. It is related of Pomponius Atticus and the philosopher Cleanthes, that they both starved themselves to death in order to get rid of physical pain. In the course of these attempts, the corporeal sufferings were removed—probably in consequence of the great exhaustion and attenuation; but both individuals persevered till death took place, observing that as this final ordeal must one day be undergone, they would not now retrace their steps or give up the undertaking.
Few, perhaps, are aware how frequently suicide results from the habit of indulging, in early youth, in a certain secret vice which, we are afraid, is practised to an enormous extent in our public schools. A feeling of false delicacy has operated with medical men in inducing them to refrain from dwelling upon the destructive consequences of this habit, both to the moral and physical constitution, as openly and honestly as the importance of the subject imperatively demands.