But he adds, “many of these causes act concurrently; it is indeed rare not to find this to be the case.”
In Class 2 he places: Physiological, the power of reflection. Moral: idleness, bad company, gambling, debauchery, theatrical plays, evil imaginings, evil literature; and Physical: insanity, hypochondriasis, ennui, nostalgia, alcoholism, celibacy, with such data as climate, age, temperament, heredity.
To Class 3 he allots bodily diseases, pain, misery, privation, slavery, loss of fortune, fear of punishment, and envy.
In Class 4, under personal, he places, offended vanity, despair, remorse, suicide to expiate a fault, suicide to secure virtue or personal purity or honour, impatience to obtain the future life, and the vanity of dying for nothing. Under public causes he classes suicide to save public honour of a government, to avenge the disgrace of one’s country, to defend the honour of others, and suicide in despair of the state of public affairs.
Despine, in his Natural Psychology, vol. iii., pp. 74-132, divides Insane Suicides into four series:
I.─Death occurs from an act proposed by the delusion of delirium; as if a man should jump off a high place thinking he is able to fly. (Delirium.)
II.─Self-destruction from Lypemania, producing a state of such sorrow and fear that the sentiment of attachment to life is lost. (Melancholia.)
III.─Suicide is performed to obtain death, simply from the desire to die. (Suicidal Monomania.)
IV.─The sufferer is caused by his malady to be violent and to destroy someone, either himself or others. (Acute Mania.)
He then proceeds to study suicides, in persons of healthy mind, “sous l’influence d’un cerveau sain.” It is determined by passions which arise from noble and generous sentiments, whilst homicide depends on egotistical and perverse passions. He divides into three series the passions determining suicide:
I.─Those occurring during rage or violent passion, incompatible with free will.
II.─In such a psychical state, that the man morally free, does not decide by free-will. Placed between two modes of action, imposed on him by circumstances; and of which one is so repugnant to his feelings that he takes the other which is less repugnant, viz., suicide.
III.─In the state of moral liberty, in which the man decides on his action by his free will.
He then gives as causes, despair, ennui, alcoholism, religion, loss of honour, to escape execution, misery, self-sacrifice, and stoicism.