CIVILISATION AND SUICIDE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 771, 10 December 1886, Page 9

CIVILISATION AND SUICIDE.

Hew York Forum.

The lightning on the wires nnd newspaper iyp.es inform us daily of fresh attempts at eelf-murder. Weary of life, in disgust and at odds with existence, men and women put an end to themselves on earth, at the cost of p-iin ful violence to their flesh and blood, with the courage of despair. If they doubt the right of. gush an act, they have the melancholy

bravery, bb Balzao calls it, to overcome their better conviction ; and they seem not to be restrained by that fear of ‘ something after death ’ which made Hnmlet pause, though he might his ‘ quietus make with a bare bodkin.’ This felony on one’s own body amounts to an often irresistible passion. In Shakespeare’s play of King John, the mother of Arthur, Constance; disappointed at the peace patched up between France and England, to the baffling of her hopes in her eon and heir, cries out, poet-like : * Death, death, O amiable, lovely death ! Arise from forth the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones ; Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’et, And buss thee as thy wife ! Misery’s love, O, come to me f I begin with observing one peculiar and prominent mark of self-murder, that it is less the custom of the barbarous than of the cub tivated man. Among crimes of violence, that which is against another’s life in- personal quarrel or war abates, but that against one*a own increases in the world, It is the sin of ’civilisation. -The French author, Gaston Garrisson, whose work reaches ua this last yea', gays in Home there was no suicide dnring the whole period between the rude foundation and the triumphant establishment of the empire. Among the Hebrews suicide was rare, the most remarkable instances bring those of Samson, Elenzar, and Saul. The snored books of the Hindus, l.ke the Jaws of Mose®, reckon self-murder as a crime. Yet Buddhism, in its doctrine that individua annihilation is the chief joy, seems to encourage suicide. Its right or wrong, according to the Roman moralists, depended on circumstances. Some examples of it are regarded by the stern stoic Seneca not ns b’ameworthy, but deserving of admiration, and showing, in condition® when life suffers disgrace and is n >t worth having, a noble contemptof death. War dispenses with suicide or keeps it at bay. While men fight they lose their lives wit,h satisfactory rapidity. But, says the historian, when the Roman legions became victorious over Italy, and carried their eagles through the world, to bring back from every despoiled region enormous wealth, and life was made pleasant, and manners grew soft; when each conquered province sent tribute to its csntral capital, Africa its grain, Svria its purple, Greece it-< eloquence and philosophy, and life was crowned with the gratification of every luxurious desire ; then arose this unnatural and astonishing scorn of existence itself. The soul had a surfeit. The milk and honey, abounding more than ever in Canaan, while the strong meat of heroic action was lacking, were too much for its health, turned the stomach, and spoiled the digestion of mankind. As in Shakespeare’s play of Twelfth Night, Orsino the Duke is cloyed at length with the music he orders, and as the fly is imprisoned and destroyed in tbo sweets it seeks and sucks, so the once savage race, which, while it had its strong hand and hard head still in exercise, only wished to live ns long as it could on the earth, found in Batiety a relaxed muscle, intermittent pulse, and softening of the brain, upon which supervened weariness of being and willingness to.eurrender it as not a boon. The play was no longer worth the candle that lighted it on the stage. Men behaved like children, who, haying discover'd the poor secret, and appraised the cheap value of their noisy, shallow rattle, with a foolish pettisbnees throw it on the floor. Let us therefore arrange thus the lisp of causes of suicide :—First, disease, especially chronic, nervous, incurable, and without hope; second, disappointment in one’s affections or nff-irs ; third, derangement of mind ; fourth, having no object, nothing to live for here below. As a vessel larches when the wind lulls, as the tired horse founders when he can no further walk, as a wheel tips when it cannot roll on, so with the loss of all forward motion a man, like Job, may long for and hunt round for a chance to tumble into his tomb ; and. to this yearning, genius or grace may not offer the antidote which is found only in the wisdom of providence, the inspiration of virtue, and the fear of God. To the ■ younger or older, seduced as by the syren in Goethe’s poem into the suffocating flood, let us preach the prophylactic of having a clear end in exigence steadily proposed and constantly pursued. Like the riders on bicycles, we stop by the way with peril of * fallWhatever is elevating in effort and incitement putß a man on guard against being his own foe. Our French author declares that the only cure or alleviation of this social evil of suicide is to sweeten for man the conditions of existence, to increase his intellectual power, and -to multiply for each individual the number of ideas. He prescribe 3, indeed, a mind-cure. A judge in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, who cannot be suspected of giving countenance to any illusions or vagaries of tbeorv or speculation, assures me long observation that lifting the general level of thonght in any community will greatly promote health and prolong life.