Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.18 #106 (Mar 1859).
The love of life is said to be one of the most powerful and lasting instincts of the human soul. And yet, an Englishman of the last century shot himself because he was tired of buttoning and unbuttoning his clothes!
Whether it be bravery or cowardice in a man himself to put an end to his life—if it be ever allowable, and what causes are sufficient to excuse so dire a deed—whether suicide be indeed murder, and thus forbidden of God, or whether, as man has the power, so he has the right to put a period to his earthly existence: these are questions which have engaged the minds of many men wise in their day, and diverse ponderous tomes have been written for and against each proposition.
But history shows that the practice has obtained only among nations sunk in enervating luxuries and vices, and that the individual cases occurring in a healthier condition of society are invariably traceable either to moral degeneracy or to mental imbecility. Suicide was most common among the Sybarites, a people who inhabited a part of Italy during the infancy of Rome; and historians relate that so enervated were these people that they would not suffer blacksmiths, carpenters, or any noisy tradesmen to live within the city bounds, lest they be broken of their sleep. The loud-crowing cock was banished for the same reason; and Seneca mentions one Mendycides, of Sybaris, as so fatigued at "seeing" a man dig that he ordered such work never more to be done in his presence.
In the winter of 1780.a British officer attempted to shoot himself, in Hyde Park, London. His pistol flashed in the pan; and a mean-looking man, who had been watching at a distance, ran up and wrenched the weapon from the officer's hand. He immediately drew his sword and attempted to stab his preserver, who drew back, and, opening his arms, said, "Stab me, Sir, if you think proper. I fear death as little as you; but I have more courage. For more than twenty years I have lived in penury and affliction, and I yet trust in God for comfort and support." Here was a contrast between courage, true and false.
Aristotle truly observed that courage is the mean between fear and rashness, while suicide is the sum of both. Socrates, condemned to drink the hemlock draught, and for thirty days steadfastly looking his death in the face, held that "we men are, as it were, on guard, and it does not become any one to relieve himself from his station." The Emperor Julian, lying on his bed, mortally wounded in battle, thanked God that, after an honorable career, He had vouchsafed him a splendid and glorious departure, continuing, "and I hold it to be equally base to solicit or to decline the stroke of fate." "Remember that you are an actor in a play, of whatever part the Master of the company pleases," says Epictetus, in his Enchiridion; "if He assigns you a short part, then of a short one; if a long one, then of a long one; if He choose you should personate a poor man, or a lame man, or a magistrate, or a private person, see that you perform your character to the best of your power: since this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; but to choose it belongs to another." Zoroaster's dictum is admirably brief, pointed, and suggestive: "It is forbidden to quit a post without the permission of the commander. Life is the post of man." The Epicureans defined suicide to be death by "the fear of death." Napoleon said, "A soldier should be able to subdue his passions; for the man who suffers mental pain without shrinking shows as much real courage as he who stands firm under the fire of a battery. To become the prey of melancholy, or to commit suicide to escape from it, is like flying from the field of battle before the contest is decided." An old English epigram declares:
"When all the blandishments of life are gone,
The coward sneaks to death; the brave live on."
And St. Paul sums up in one pithy sentence, "Let us then run with patience the race that is set before us."
"Dying," says Montaigne, "is without doubt the most remarkable action of human life." But he doubts if constancy and obstinacy in so dangerous a resolve as that of suicide are to be found. "It is very easy to bravado before one comes to the push; insomuch that Heliogabalus, the most effeminate man in the world, among his most sensual pleasures could forecast to make himself die delicately when he should be forced thereto; and that his death might not give the lie to the rest of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the base whereof was covered and laid with planks enriched with gold and precious stones, thence to precipitate himself; and also caused cords twisted with gold and crimson silk to be made, wherewith to strangle himself; and a sword, with the blade of gold to be hammered out, to fall upon; and kept poison in vessels of emerald and topaz, wherewith to poison himself, according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying. Yet as to this fellow, the effeminacy of his preparations makes it more than likely that his heart would have failed him had he been put to the test."
Against this, however, must be cited the story of the philosopher Cleanthes. He had his gums swollen and rotten; his physicians (sensible men) advised him to great abstinence. Having fasted two days he was so much better that they pronounced him cured, and permitted him to his ordinary course of diet; "he, on the contrary, already tasting some sweetness in this faintness of his, would not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to proceed and to finish what he had so far advanced in," and accordingly starved himself to death.
The voice of the ancients was almost unanimous in favor of suicide under certain circumstances. Seneca declared the general sentiment when he wrote that "the wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can." Philip writing to the Lacedemonians that he would frustrate all their enterprises, received for answer, "What! wilt thou also hinder us from dying?" And when gis was asked which way a man might live free, he answered, "By despising death." Pliny admitted of but three sorts of diseases to escape which a man has good title to destroy himself; two of which were headache and a pain in the stomach. But in Rome, at the time of its highest prosperity, this death was astonishingly common; every conceivable excuse justified it, and every conceivable method was resorted to by its votaries. Starvation was a usual mode, and a surprising number of persons persevered in this, tedious as it was. Opening a vein, leaping from a precipice, and falling upon one's sword were other means much countenanced. The list of illustrious Romans and Greeks who put a period to their own existence is very curious:
Demosthenes took poison, which he carried in a pen.
Homer, it is related, hanged himself because he could not solve "the fishermen's riddle."
Cato stabbed himself.
Lucretius, long before, had a similar self-inflicted death.
Terence, the great poet, drowned himself because he lost his collection—one hundred and eight in number—of translated comedies.
Labienus, the poet, too, because his writings were burned by edict, burned himself!
Portia, Cato's daughter, and Catulus Luctatius died by swallowing burning coals.
Herennius, the Sicilian, beat his brains out against a post, and continued his suicidal knockings until he could and did see and salute them! He has had a modern imitator.
Seneca opened his veins.
Hannibal, as some say, took poison, which he carried in a ring; while others affirm that he drank bull's blood.
Empedocles, an old philosopher, threw himself into the crater of Vesuvius—a feat which was imitated on a small scale, a few years ago, by an English woman, who threw herself into the furnace of an iron foundery.
Petronius Arbiter, one of Nero's men of pleasure, having incurred the displeasure of his master, went home and opened his veins.
Nero himself cut his throat, to avoid a sterner fate.
Democles scalded himself to death.
Zeno, at the age of ninety-eight, stumbled and broke his thumb. He interpreted this accident as a summons from the earth, and hanged himself.
Cicero's eloquence—the dread of it—caused two suicides: of Macer, who hanged himself when informed that the great orator would plead against him; and of Cassius Licinius, who choked himself with a napkin to escape Cicero's judgment.
Aristarchus starved himself.
Cleombrotus Ambraciota, having read Plato's Phædo, "entered into so great a desire of the life to come that, without any other occasion, he threw himself into the sea."
Coccieus Nerva, a famous and wealthy lawyer of Rome, killed himself "out of compassion for the miserable estate of the Roman Republie."
In the reign of Tiberius it was a law of Rome that the condemned who waited to be executed forfeited their possessions, and were denied the rites of sepulture; but those who by killing themselves did anticipate it were interred, and had liberty to dispose of their estates by will.
Though many Greeks put a period to their existence, it was the custom of that nation to rank voluntary suicide with treason, conspiracy, and sacrilege; but their laws against it were seldom enforced, and their prisoners condemned to death were their own executioners by poison. The Athenians cut off, after death, that hand of the suicide which was used in committing the act.
In the Isle of Zia, one of the Cyclades, it was the custom for "unprofitable old men" to poison themselves—which they did, we are told, "crowned with garlands, as triumphers over misery." Strabo relates that this practice was enforced, particularly on the women! at the age of sixty years. The only reason that we find for this cruel custom is, that "the air is healthy and the people disposed to longevity!"
In Massillia, a Roman colony fixed on the present site of Marseilles, the magistrates kept, at the public charge, a poison prepared of hemlock for those who had a mind to suicide. To obtain this the law required that the person should first appear before the Six Hundred—their Senate—and give a proper account of his reasons and motives for the act. Hereupon the magistrate granted leave thereto, and rendered up a sufficient portion of the deadly draught. And Pliny speaks of a certain hyperborean nation, "where, by reason of the sweet temperature of the air, lives did rarely end but by the voluntary surrender of the inhabitants; but being weary and satiated with life, they had a custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer, to precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock destined for that service."
Quintilian states and argues the case of a young man who, by "mathematician's predictions," was first to slay many enemies in battle and subsequently to kill his father. He became a warrior, and the first part of the prophecy was fulfilled. Coming home, and fearing that the second part would also be accomplished, he petitioned the Senate that he might kill himself in order to avoid so terrible a calamity.
By the Code of Justinian suicide is not ranked as a moral offense or crime in itself. The confiscation of property, which is the penalty of some suicides expressly pointed out, was never inflicted when any one killed himself, "either through weariness of life or an impatience under pain or ill-health, or for any other reason—not affecting the public treasury."
It was a crime, therefore, only when its clammy fingers touched the sensitive pocket of the state! The only rescript which relates to the subject, or seeks to impose a penalty, was issued by Adrian one hundred and twenty years after the birth of Christ. It decrees that "if a soldier do attempt to kill himself and not effect it, except he offered it upon impatience or grief, or sickness or sorrow, or some other cause, he shall be beheaded."
The same rescript is repeated in another title with this additional clause to the excusing causes: "Weariness of life, madness, or shame!"
St. Augustine tells us, in his Contemplation on the Bees, that "the subjects of the Persian King were their own executioners."
Among the ancient Ethiopians there were few men executed. It is recorded that they always avoided that fate by suicide, and that the practice was encouraged.
Though suicide in various forms, and under different pretexts, has become common in India, it appears that the Shastah, the ancient religious book of the Hindoos, strictly forbids it, and entails upon the self-murderer the severest punishment. It is related in the account of the creation given in the Shastah that the Debtah were God's angels; some of whom, rebelling, were thrown down to Onderah, a place of intense darkness, there to be punished forever. The faithful angels interceding for their fallen brethren, their punishment was finally commuted, and they were again placed in a state of trial and probation—preparatory to their being readmitted to heaven, if found worthy. For this purpose God created fifteen Boboons (regions or planets) for their purgation and purification. The earth is made the eighth, or middle of the fifteen; and after passing safely through the first seven, the spirit on its trial arrives upon our planet, and there assumes the lowest form of animal life. After having passed through eighty-seven different changes or forms of life, the last of which is that of the Ghoii, or cow, it at last enters the form of Mhurd, or man. Those who conduct themselves satisfactorily here are permitted to pass through the other seven Boboons of purgation. Those who misbehave are cast down again to Onderah, there to resume their weary travel upward. Now among the commands which Bramah received from God to communicate to the children of earth is the following, given in the divine language: "The mortal form wherewith I shall encompass the delinquent Debtah are the work of my hand. They shall not be destroyed, but left to their natural decay. Therefore whichsoever Debtah shall by designed violence bring about the dissolution of the mortal forms animated by their delinquent brethren, thou, Sieb, shalt plunge the offending spirit into Onderah for a space; and he shall be doomed to pass again the eighty-nine changes. But whosoever shall dare to free himself by violence from the mortal form wherewith I shall inclose him, thou, Sieb, shalt plunge him into Onderah forever."[1]
It was no rare thing in the ancient wars for the entire inhabitants of a city to put themselves to death when capture appeared else inevitable. Thus perished a city of the Indies besieged by Alexander the Great, and also a Spanish place taken by the Romans. The Abydeans, pressed by King Philip, determined upon a similar course, but were surprised by their shrewd conqueror, who ingeniously took possession of their gold and treasure, and then gave the inhabitants of the city three days in which to slaughter themselves—which they accordingly did, there being no man left at the expiration of the appointed time.
There are numerous instances of generals of armies capping defeat with suicide. But none so quaint as that of Jaques du Chastel, Bishop of Soissons. He accompanied Louis IX. (St. Louis) on his unfortunate expedition into Africa, and seeing the King and the whole army upon the point of returning to France, '"leaving the affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution," says an old chronicler, "rather to go into Paradise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave of his friends, he charged alone, in the sight of every one, into the enemy's army, where he was presently cut to pieces."
The Japanese are the only people known to history among whom the established mode of suicide is taught to all youth as an indispensable part of their education. The Hara-kiri (literally, "happy dispatch") is a mode of disemboweling one's self, with which every Japanese of condition must be theoretically familiar; and great pains are taken to instruct boys in the proper way of performing it, the ceremonies which should accompany it, and the circumstances under which a well-bred man should feel himself obliged thus to destroy himself.
Singularly enough suicide has taken at different times the form of anepidemic. Gallius relates that the young women of Milesium once took it into their heads to put a period to their existence by throwing themselves into the wells. So far did the matter progress that the authorities were obliged to interfere. They put an immediate stop to this insane epidemic by the ingenious threat that every suicide should have her body exposed to the public gaze. Pliny relates that Tarquinius Priscus once put a stop to a similar state of things in his army by hanging up the bodies of suicides in trees and permitting the birds to devourtheir flesh. At Lyons, France, the women were once seized with a singular mania for throwing themselves down wells. The magistrates successfully imitated the example of their Milesian predecessors. When Malta was seized by the British, suicides became so frequent that the new Government was justly alarmed. It was only by treating the bodies of the self-murderers with the greatest indignities that a summary stop was put to the mania. Paris also has witnessed such a suicidal epidemic among its female population. It was stopped by refusing the rites of burial to those who killed themselves. In 1793, during the Reign of Terror, 1300 suicides occurred in Versailles alone.
During the best half of the last century suicide became alarmingly frequent in England and France. This was the legitimate consequence of the extraordinary degeneracy of public and private morals in those countries. Gaming, drinking, and their kindred vices were practiced to excess; fortunes were nightly lost and gained at the card-tables. Mercier, writing in 1782, says that Paris, on account of the difficulties of getting a living, the gambling excesses, and the vast number of lotteries, had more suicides than any other city in the world. He adds naïvely that "at London it is the rich who kill themselves, because rich Englishmen are the most capricious of mortals, and consequently feel the greatest ennui." Various incidents, indeed, bore him out in his odd statement. One of Dr. Darwin's patients complained to him that "a ride out in the morning, and a warm parlor and a pack of cards in the evening comprised all that life affords," and not caring to endure such monotony longer, after fifty years' trial of it, he cut his throat. One Briton blew out his brains because he suffered from dyspepsia; another, for cause unknown, killed himself by rolling down the great Pyramid. Winslow relates that a Greenwich pensioner stabbed himself with his spectacles, sharpened for the purpose, because his allowance of grog had been stopped for some minor misdemeanor. A British apothecary blew out his brains, leaving to the world this legacy: "When a man knows not how to please his mistress, he ought to know how to die!" Jeremiah Clarke, a man in comfortable circumstances, walking out at evening into the country suddenly determined on suicide. Climbing over a fence to accomplish his purpose in a sheltered spot, he found himself in presence of a pond and some trees. Unable to decide between the two modes of death thus suggested, he finally tossed up a penny, which, coming down, struck upon its edge in the stiff mud, and "told no tale." Hereupon Mr. Clarke returned to his town lodgings and shot himself. Miss Frances Braddock, a young lady of nineteen years, wealthy, beautiful, and witty, but immoderately fond of play, gambled away her entire fortune in a year; and being at Bath, in 1731, was found one morning in her room hanging by a gold and silver girdle to a closet door. Her fate excited commiseration among all who knew her, except a near relative, who, when he heard of it, exclaimed, "Then she has tied herself up from play!"
So common did self-murder become, that the author of the Connoisseur declared his intention to make up a yearly list of British suicides, and proposed to distribute blanks among his friends in various parts, to be filled up from time to time. His blanks furnished the following supposititious causes, wherein we find a fair setting forth of the leading vices and extravagances of the day. He supposes deaths from
Newmarket races. Fortune-hunting.
Electioneering. Lord Bolingbroke, etc.
Lotteries. The Robin Hood Society.
Gambling. An equipage.
French wines, cooks, etc. The dog-kennel.
Chinese temples. Covent Garden.
A town-house. Plays, operas, concerts, masks, etc.
A country-house. Keeping the best company.
Tour through France, Italy, etc.
But Frenchmen are no less ridiculous than Britons in the cause and manner of their self-inflicted deaths. Chenier killed himself by thrusting a key down his throat; and he has found a woman to imitate him. One of Rousseau's friends advocated suicide all his life, and having lived to the age of eighty, drowned himself in the Lake of Geneva. A French woman killed herself by swallowing broken glass—a frightful death. That not inconsiderable portion of Paris at present suicidally inclined, is divided between jumping off bridges and monuments (which have to be guarded by police to prevent such vile uses) and asphyxiation by charcoal fumes. The latter is decidedly the most popular mode with loving couples bent on death, from the fact that it occasions little physical suffering, admits of caresses and conversation during the closing moments of life, and gratifies a post-mortem vanity by not disfiguring the body.
The modern statistics of suicide present some singular facts. In a catalogue of suicides in London between 1770 and 1830, of the total of 7190 cases, 4337 were males and 2853 females; 1416 are attributed to poverty, 605 to reverse of fortune, and 1252 to domestic grief. But the catalogue is of little value to show causes, no less than 1389 males and 337 females being set down to "unknown." Fewer females commit suicide than males. In Berlin there were five males to one female; in Paris two to one; in Geneva four to one. The woman has evidently more of that species of courage denominated fortitude than man. Towns are more prolific of suicides than the country by fourteen to one. According to Professor Balbi's tables, the proportion of suicides to the population is in Copenhagen, 1 in 1000; in Paris, 1 in 2040; in Berlin, 1 in 2941; in London, 1 in 5000; in New York, 1 in 7797; in Boston, 1 in 12,500; in Baltimore, 1 in 13,656; in Philadelphia, 1 in 15,875. In the whole of France it is as 1 in 20,740; in Prussia, 1 in 14,404; in Austria, 1 in 20,900; and in European Russia, 1 in 49,182. This proves that the chief cities in even a thickly-populated country furnish by far the greater number of suicides.
It has been long thought that the gloomy weather of the later months of autumn conduces to suicide, and dull November has been called the month wherein Englishmen do most affect their death. But the table of M. Villeneuve, extending over seven years, proves this to be an error. His results were:
Spring ............ 997
Summer ......... 933
Winter ........... 648
Autumn ......... 627
Also, by other tables, it is proved that the maximum number of suicides in London, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Rouen, occur in June and July, and the minimum number in October and November.
Curiosity has impelled some men to suicide. A case in point is furnished by a Polish youth who killed himself in New York some years ago, and left a poetic apology for his act, which, freely rendered, reads:
"Here lies a skeptic who was always doubting,
The proofs even of a God above him scouting;
To his own consciousness he made resistance,
And was uncertain of his own existence;
So, tired of doubt and darkness altogether,
Taking advantage of this genial weather,
He seeks in haste the other world's abyss,
To learn what mortals may believe in this!"
Of modern means for suicide the list of Professor Casper, of Berlin, including five hundred cases, gives a fair résumé. He states that 234 died by hanging, 163 by shooting, 60 by drowning (the summer season is the favorite for a watery death), 17 by cutting the throat, 20 by stabbing, 10 by poison, and 2 by opening an artery.
He attempts to give, also, the causes which moved these five hundred to the fatal deed. But he is obliged to put "unknown" to no less than 282 of the total. Of the balance he states 61 as dying from mental alienation, 54 from drunkenness and dissipation, 32 from dread of punishment, 18 from debts and domestic troubles, 14 from offended honor, 12 from painful diseases, 12 from love, 11 from matrimonial strife, 1 from religious excitement, and 3 from simple disgust of life, without especial moving cause.
We close our gathering with a word from Dr. Johnson. Boswell relates that he "supposed a case" to the Doctor: "If a man is absolutely sure that if he lives a few days longer he shall be detected in a frand, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace and expulsion from society," whether, in such case, he would not be justified in killing himself? To which the Ursa Major of Literature: "Sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known; don't let him go to the devil, where he is known."
1. Holwell on the Shastah.