THE GENERATIVE GERMS WHICH RIPEN INTO SELF-MURDER.

THE last chapter, concerning the evils arising from a "mental perversity," makes the following considerations indispensable.

Humanity cannot look with indifference upon "the suicide." The horrible unnatural act presupposes and demonstrates that somewhere, in the heart's concealed recesses, there must exist unutterable sorrows and desolations. Hope's heavenly light, which once illumined hat human heart, must have been extinguished. Who, and What, "put out the light"? A despairing frenzy, with a reflective and deliberate "method in its madness," may have psychologized the intellectual faculties. The act is significant of an irretrievable loss of selfrespect—an overthrow of every exalted motive to prolong the incessant struggle for life—despair of appreciation, a prostration of the nobler moral powers, the paralysis of that sublime bravery by which sane and healthy natures live through all opposition and triumph over every imaginable enemy. The great seething world heeds not the private griefs of the lonely soul, and treats with a horrible unsentimentality every self

murderer; and yet, moved by a diviner impulse, humanity invariably becomes charitable and indulgent over the grave of the departed.

THE INSANE IMPULSE TO COMMIT SUICIDE.

An observant editor of one of our metropolitan dailies (Times) was moved to present a purely "Outside View" of this growing contagion, thus: "To the thoughtful mind there is no more distressing feature of the time than the constant increase of suicides all over the country. One cannot take up a newspaper without being shocked by the announcement of two or three new cases of self-murder. And what is most striking about the matter is the triviality of the pretexts which, in the majority of instances, furnish motives for the crime. A boy of twelve, corrected by his mother for disobedience, picks out a text of the Bible, from which to have his funeral sermon preached, and then coolly hangs himself in the barn. A young woman of St. Louis, not hearing from her lover for four entire days, finds life intolerable, and presently swallows poison. An Iowa girl, whose beauty and accomplishments Western papers have painted in glowing colors, without even the excuse of blighted love, but simply because they were cold to her at home,' jumped into the river, and

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was seen to hold her head under water until she was drowned. Only a day or two ago a news-vender of this city, because he disapproved of some of his wife's associations, thought himself justified in slaughtering her, her friend, his child, and finally himself. To be sure he accomplished none of these intentions, but that, as he seems himself to look upon it, was his misfortune and not his fault. A young man of Providence kills himself and his wife in a fit of unreasoning jealousy. Affairs of this latter sort, however, in which husbands and lovers secure their peace of mind by killing themselves and the objects of their affection, are too common to excite remark, and, perhaps, come as near to furnishing an adequate motive as is possible under the circumstances. Jealousy may become so intense as to amount o positive insanity; indeed, French physicians classify t as a form of mental aberration. But the number of suicides occurring daily, without even this or any apparent justification, is appallingly large. Men, women, and children seem to have been seized at once with a fatal epidemic of self-murder.

In all this, moralists and statesmen will find food for grave reflection. To check the evil, by any prompter method than the slow and not always sure agencies of education and religion, is more desirable than easy. Undoubtedly suicide is peculiarly a crime which tends

to propagate itself by imitation. Then, too, a certain false condonation, a sentimental pity, with which we are wont to regard a suicide, especially for love, tends greatly to its repetition. And without going so far as that cruel old English law, which buried the suicide at the cross-roads, with a stake driven through his body, and forfeited his estates to the Crown, a judicious expression of public opinion might still serve to make felo-dese more disreputable and less frequent than it is. Moral law has always declared that no human being has any more authority to take his own life than another's, and if political codes have seemed to hold otherwise, it is probably because the successful criminal, in this case, has passed beyond human punishment. The ignominy and forfeiture of the English law fell upon the innocent and not the guilty; and although such a penalty might serve as a preventive, its inherent cruelty would forbid its enforcement. Practically the statute would remain a dead letter, and, like all inoperative laws, would be rather an incentive to crime than a deterrent.

Still, as we have said, force of public opinion may do much to check the disposition to suicide, and the attempt, if made unsuccessfully, may properly come under the cognizance of the authorities, and be visited with suitable punishment. If insanity be proved against the would-be-suicide, he should be placed under

restraint; and if his act is found to be premeditated, a brief term of imprisonment or a fine, or both, would probably moderate his own bloodthirstiness and chill the ardor of possible imitators. Felo-de-se is more often committed with the view of making a sensation than many people imagine; doubtless from the same motive it is quite as often attempted with no serious intention of completing the crime. In any event, its alarming prevalence warns us to take some measures for its suppression, and our legislators will do well to give to it what attention they can spare from other business."

The foregoing, like most editorial writing in this rushing epoch, is sufficiently materialistic and superficial to be comprehended by minds not very "thoughtful;" and yet it is suggestive, which justifies its appearance in these pages.

The generative causes of suicide, in the germ state, are inherited and constitutional, speaking generally; although certain powerful and crushing circumstances often occur along the life-line of every person which may rationally tempt the victim to escape by violence; the suffering one for the moment forgetting that the Divine Code forbids all such unnatural efforts to enter into "the Kingdom of Heaven." Many minds feel self-approved and attempt justification for indulging