The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1894.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 31, 5 February 1894, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1894.

For tlio cause that lacks ajsistanos, For tha wrong that imAn resistance, For. the More in the distance. And tho good that we can ae.

The suicide mania is attracting attention in various quarters of the globe. It is not that suicide is a new thing, for from early times men and women in tbe last resort have sacrificed their lives at the altar of hopelessness. Kings, philosophers and generals weary of the world, fell upon their sword?, took poison or in some other way brought their lives to a sudden ending. Amongst the higher classes of the Greeks and Romans in the decadence of their glory, suicide if not regarded as a virtue, was not unfrequently considered as a not unmanly mode of terminating a life which its owner felt to be a burden. Stripped of the false glamour which attached to self-destruc-tion in those times, it may be traced to two latent causes—cowardice and a decay of religious faith. Cowardice is not characteristic of any age. There always have been men wfoom mental or bodily ailments, or adversity, have rendered nerveless, or in other words, who became cowards and full of hopelessness, and in a moment of despair, casting off the mortal coil, rushed recklessly into the Unknown.

The decay of religious faith chiefly affected the upper classeß amongst the Greeks and Romans, and it was amongst them that suicides were most frequent. Two centuries before the Christian era, heathenism had lost its hold upon, the educated classes. In the words of Gibbon, all religions were regarded by philosophers as equally false, by the magistrates as equally use-

fill, and by the superstitious as equally true. Is is not surprising, therefore, when tbe belief in a future slate, and in the existence of any retributive power had disappeared, that so many of those who believed that this life was all, with nothing beyond, put an end to lives which were without hope and without God.

The religion of the Greeks and Romans, false though it was, nevertheless appealed to the instincts and supplied some of the cravings of humanity, natural to man in every age and country. • False though such a faith may have been, its decay led to the destruction of patriotism, to the development of a ruthless selfishness, and to a hideous immorality which made the last centuries of the Roman empire a curse to the ancient world.

The destruction of such an empire, without patriotism, without virtue, without justice, without liberty, was a paramount necessity, and when the barbarians rushed from their forests and swept over the empire in a tornado of blood, destruction and ruin—though they destroyed many noble monuments, many treasures of learning—when the storm waa over humanity was a gainer ; and, aided and guided by a purer faith, under which, though religion and liberty suffered many reverses, man marched onwards and upwards to a better and a nobler life.

In the end of this proud and boasting nineteenth century, mankind are confronted once more with the decay of faith, and are sinking into the hopelessness which is the natural outcome of the deadly disbelief in a future state and in an Almighty Power, which the writings of Darwin and Huxley and their fellows have been most active agents in creating. The Darwinian doctrines of " the descent of man " and ol " the survival of the fittest" have, strangely enough, become the fashion amongst great numbers of mankind. The dogma of "the survival of the fittest" is a doctrine which strikes at the root of every virtue that distinguishes man from a brute. Its tendency is to destroy pity (or the feeble and the helpless, to pluck up by the roots the noble quality of consideration for others, to foster the triumph of the strong over the weak, to abandon the poor and the feeble—in a word, to encourage the already too dominant motive of "every man for himself," with its natural though unadmitted corollary of "the devil for us all."

These detestable doctrines are applicable enough to the wild beasts in a forest, where the strong prey upon the weak in obedience to the law of life under which they fight their way to "the survival of the fittest." Happily for mankind there is written on the soul of man Christ's command, "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as thyself." The direct tendency of the Darwinian philosophy is to destroy belief in these noble commands. Under the withering influence of such a dogma as " the survival of the fittest," what noble principle of self-denial, pity or love may not die, to be replaced by the belief that " the victory is to the strong." The combatants who came out of tbe contest are the "fittest," and ought, therefore, to " survive." Right, justice, duty have no place in such a theory. Under such a doctrine has there ever been a successful crime which could not be justified. For the first time in its history, science—so-called —has supplied an incentive and a justification for crime or outrage, so long as they succeed, their " survivial" —according to Darwin — proving them to be the "fittest."

That these dangerous doctrines are producing their natural result is evident enough from the desperate?, attempts of the Anarchists to destroy their victimß*--the helpless and innocent child as well as tbe defender of the law. M. Vaillant, an Anarchist now lying under sentence of death in Paris for throwing a dynamite bomb into the midst of the Deputies assembled in Parliament, and wounding fifteen of them, is an instance in point. This miscreant boldly declared on his trial that the writings of Darwin justified his action. Unfortunately the Darwinian doctrines have not only influenced the class to which the Anarchists belong. They have filtered through all ranks of society in the English-speaking world. They are said to be steadily destroying the basis of religious belief amongst large numbers of the working classes. Practical atheism, the disbelief in a future state, the most utter selfishness, are silently pervading many minds, and, like a deadly miasma, are sapping the foundations of society.

The growing disbelief in a future state and in the existence of God, whilst it stimulates the vicious and the villainous to make open war against society, has filled the minds of those who have neither the boldness nor the villainy of the Anarchists with hopelessness, despair and cowardice. The frightful competition in trade, the tyranny and selfishness of trades unions and companies—monetary and commercial—the luxury of the rich and the misery of the poor, together with the bitterness of adversity—these, in the absence of a belief in an unseen but over-ruling Providence, make their victims conclude that life is not worth the living, and by one rash and cowardly act tbcy rush into the Unknown.

The Anarchist and the suicide are as the straws which show the direction in which the stream is running. If the opinions which Save directly contributed to their actions go on in-

creasing unchecked, their votaries and their victims, then history will repeat itself, and civilisation may prepare for a catastrophe, the measure and the result of which none can tell.