The older authors on Suicide only viewed it from a narrative and sentimental point of view, and it is only of late years that it has been the object of any scientific research; but now that a study of suicide, as a fact, has been instituted, it has fallen almost entirely into a statistical groove, to the neglect of research into the mental state and emotions of the unfortunate individuals who become victims. Suicide is an individual act, and this point is in danger of being lost sight of in a too absorbing study of general principles.
Most copious and elaborate investigations have been made into the proportional intensity of cosmic, telluric, climatic, and racial states, as causes of Suicide, to the neglect of the fact that men and women are not simply automatons, and that mental and moral causes act in different fashions on different minds more certainly than data of temperature, geological formation, and position of the sun. Than Morselli, no man has contributed more information on the subject of Suicide; but he is so far led on by his devotion to figures, that he actually assigns as a cause of suicide and as a factor in its prevalence, the relative position of the Sun and Earth, the alternating states of Aphelion and Perihelion!
I am under great obligation to continental observers, for in the ensuing pages I quote frequently from their statistics, viz., from Œttingen, Wagner, Falret, Quetelet, Brierre de Boismont, Drobisch, Legoyt, Lisle, and from Morselli of Turin, who supplies the most recent data.
Among predisposing influences will be mentioned, the effects of race, religion, education, and morality; together with those of climate, and the geographical peculiarities of a country.
The varying proportions exhibited by the differences of age, sex, and social condition; the effects of town as compared with country life, and the special characteristics of the military and naval services, and of prison life, will be described.
In respect to social life, mention will be found of the states of celibacy, matrimony, and widowed life; and also some special reference to suicide in childhood.
In our consideration of determining causes we shall be guided by the scheme of tabulation in use in many continental states, because it affords a better means of comparison between the several data, than if any independent arrangement were suggested. This scheme divides these final causes into three main classes, of mental diseases, bodily diseases, and moral or immoral motives, as follows:
A.─Mental Affections. See special Chapter; including Insomnia, Spiritualism, suicides caused by Imitation, and desire of Notoriety.
B.─Bodily diseases; Incurable diseases; pain, Alcoholism, Morphia habit, and the effect of Hereditary predisposition.
C.─Tædium vitæ, nostalgia, etc.
D.─Violence of the passions; jealousy, anger, avarice, disappointed love, spite.
E.─Effect of the Vices; libertinism, onanism, drunkenness.
F.─Domestic trouble, and anguish of the affections; loss of relatives, deluded hopes, dissensions at home, want of children.
G.─Financial losses; loss of employment, gambling, loss of law suits.
H.─Misery, want of home and food, and fear of such want.
I.─Fear, shame, and remorse; seduction, unmarried pregnancy, the haunting of a criminal’s conscience.
J.─Despair; this class is made to include unknown causes; to which may be added:
K.─Honourable motives, yet misdirecting conduct.
Beyond all the predispositions, and states of disease, as causes of a voluntary death, follow the consideration of the less tangible, but terribly effectual moral motives, which have been briefly tabulated. Volumes have been, and might still be written on the disastrous effects of ungoverned passions, and ill-regulated desires, and their consequences, guilt and shame, remorse and terror.