SUICIDE, the act of intentionally destroy ing one's own life, whether sane or insane— the act in itself, accompanied by the purpose, is suicide; the condition of sanity or insanity bears on the question of responsibility. In con sidering the causes which lead to suicide it may be well to mention the motives which deter from it. First of all is the natural love of life, which leads even condemned criminals, perhaps awaiting death by torture, to cling to the few hours or days remaining to them. This love of life is in the very nature of all living beings, and it is not always or even usually to be measured by the apparent value of existence to the individual. It is at least as strong in the Digger Indian or the Kongo negro as in the civilized and well-to-do resident of America or Europe. There is next, among the more in telligent, whether religiously inclined or not, the sense of duty to others; among the strictly religious, there is the dread of punishment be yond the grave, and statistics indicate that this is a potent and prevalent deterrent from self destruction.
Suicide is not in itself a sign of weakness of intellect. There were periods of depression in the Revolutionary struggle when Washington was despondent almost to the point of welcom ing death, and Bismarck once contemplated suicide. Napoleon, after his first overthrow, attempted suicide by taking poison. Hannibal committed suicide. Herndon, Abraham Lin coln's law partner, relates that after the death of Miss Rutledge, whom Lincoln loved, his friends watched him closely for fear that "the dark and gloomy weather might produce such a depression of spirits as to induce him to take his own life? Instances might be multiplied of the world's greatest men who either committed suicide, or attempted it, or were on the brink of it.
Although there are no statistics for compari son, yet the observations of trustworthy nar rators indicate that suicide is very much more common among Asiatics than among Western nations. Arthur H. Smith, D.D., says there are parts of China in which young girls band themselves into a secret league to commit suicide within a certain time after they have been betrothed or married, that the practice of suicide "is adopted even by children, and for causes relatively trifling. At times it appears
to spread like the smallpox, and the thirst for suicide becomes virtually an epidemic." China is probably the only country in the world in which criminals are permitted, or rather di rected as an act of special grace, to commit suicide. Before the Japanese adopted civilized methods suicide was also prevalent among them, the usual form being known as "hari kari or seppuku" the victim disembowel ing himself with knife or sword. In India vast numbers of fanatics sought death under the car of Juggernaut, and widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands, until the British au thorities put a stop to these practices.
It is yet an undecided question whether edu cation fosters the tendency to suicide or not. Thomas Garrigue Masaryk (q.v.), first Presi dent of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, when a lecturer on philosophy at Vienna in 1879, came into prominence by a study on °Suicide" as a pathological symptom of the condition of con temporary Europe. He attributed its chief cause to the decline of religious sentiment. It cannot be alleged that education has anything to do with the epidemics of suicide among Chi nese women. On the other hand, it is easy to suppose, and statistics appear to support the presumption, that, other things equal, a preva lence of materialism, a disbelief in things super natural, and consequent loss of assurance that privations and sufferings here are to be recom pensed by an eternity of happiness hereafter, tend to make men tired of life and willing to anticipate by a few years their inevitable des tiny. Bismarck said that "if this world were the end of all, it would not be worth the dressing and the undressing." So far, therefore, as edu cation helps to promote materialism, it pro motes suicide. At the same time it is to be remembered that such men as Tyndall and Darwin, who were avowedly in discord with accepted religious tenets, regarded it as a duty and a pleasure to live and do their share of life's work.