killed, and yet escaped the notice of men of science? It seems to us that not only those who believe strychnine was the agent used by Palmer should desire a further analysation of the subject, but also those who deny it, and yet believe that he drugged his victim to death.'

Part Second.

Reviews.

ON SUICIDE AND SUICIDAL INSANITY.†

Is suicide exclusively a medical question? Is it a question that only concerns the civil magistrate? Or is it simply a question of theology or of ethics? At one epoch or another of the world's history, philosophy or theology, the legislator or the physician, has acquired a more or less predominant authority in the solution of this question. In the ages of paganism, philosophy prevailed; since the era of Christianity, religion has exercised the most powerful voice in the decision; to-day, it is medicine that holds the scales. Once, a suicide was a title to honour; then, it was a deadly sin; now, it is a disease. Which is right? One thing is certain-that whether we investigate the phenomena of suicide by the treacherous light of pure philosophy; whether we test them by the precepts of a divine religion; or whether we submit them to medical analysis,-suicide is essentially and above all a psychological question. If, then, we study the subject with reference to its psychological import, bearing in mind the accidental yet numerous and intimate relations with philosophical systems, with religious creeds, with legislative codes, and with medical doctrines, we shall take the surest means of arriving at a knowledge at once broad and impartial, comprehensive and exact. Shall we anticipate the general conclusion to which such a study will lead us? The conclusion will be this: there is truth in all the several tests, if those tests be applied to the solution of particular cases; all are wrong if it be assumed that any one of them is in itself sufficient to solve every case. A suicidist may be sane or insane; and, according to the epoch in which he lived, or the opinions and circumstances by which he was surrounded, he might be a man of exalted virtue or a conscious sinner.

The common sense of mankind, although often clouded by the

The Association Journal," 21st June.

+"On Suicide and Suicidal Insanity, considered in their relations with Statistics, Medicine, and Philosophy." By A. Brierre de Boismont. Paris, 1856. Baillière,

changing prejudices of succeeding centuries and of different countries, and often oppressed by the presumptuous dogmas of those who have sought to impose upon the world their own theological interpretations, has always seen through the fallacies of absolute opinions, and has always recognized as real the distinction that strikes the first appre

hensions of all between the mental conditions of suicides. Before the era when Christianity shed its gentle light upon mankind,-before erring and simple man had been taught to regard as sacred the image of his Maker, and had learned from the Great Example that the surpassing virtue was to suffer,-the citizen despairing of his country, the man ruined in his fortunes, the defeated warrior, or he who had incurred the displeasure or had exposed himself to the revenge of the powerful, calmly severed the bond that tied them to this life. They thought thus to escape from a world in which their part had been played out, in the same way that by one resolute effort of the will we shake off an unpleasant dream! They were not solicitous for the future; their only care was to flee from present despair. The elysium of the pagan was not shut against him who, weary of the world above, should by his own act seek the companionship of the shades below. The deaths of Lucretia, who would not survive her dishonour, -of Brutus, who could not look upon the ruin of the republic,-of Cato, who would not grace the triumph of Cæsar,-of Cleopatra, who could conquer no more conquerors, were applauded by men, and represented by the poets as acceptable to the gods. Were these insane ? The death of each can be matched in the present day in every noble sentiment; all that will be wanting is the air of grandeur that is derived from antiquity.

The Christian suffers in the belief that this world is a scene of probation, that he suffers but for an inappreciable moment of eter nity, that endless felicity hereafter is awarded to those who have borne their earthly burden in faith and patience, and that it is not for him to presume to cut short that stage of trial assigned to him by his Maker. The ancient Roman had none of these motives to respect a life which he regarded as his own, to deal with at his pleasure. It was not, therefore, only in the sublime crises of life--not only when patriotism despaired, when honour was lost, when tyranny was to be baffled when friends, kindred, or country were to be saved that the Roman thought it time to die. A ray of heroism that still dazzles even a Christian world hallows the deaths of Curtius, Brutus, and Cato, and tempts us almost to join in the applause of antiquity. These men wanted, indeed, the heroism of endurance, but they were not supported by the faith that animates the Christian. Wanting this faith, they yielded to the noblest impulses of unregenerated humanity. Public virtue and private honour constituted their religion; these sentiments were amongst the most effective safeguards of society; to obey their dictates was to exhibit the loftiest piety and devotion of which the age was capable. We cannot, then, even in the abundant light of the Christian faith, nor in the full reason of manhood, condemn as absolutely sinful, deeds which shone amongst the brightest of olden time,

and which still never fail to evoke the first generous emotions of classical boyhood.

And although the progress and spread of civilization and of true religion have, since the epoch when the Roman Empire represented the whole civilized world, been great, that progress and that spread have still been partial and unequal. Therefore it is that we may, even at the present day, by simply looking around us and surveying the existing world, discover living types of all those conditions of barbarism, systems of philosophy, and theological creeds, which have successively, at some period or another, stamped the character of an age. If we avail ourselves of this fact, we shall find that we possess all the advantages that actual observation can bring to the study and elucidation of this difficult question. If, for example, we wish to inquire into the mental condition of the patriot or the warrior who thinks it glorious, or at least not infamous, to die by his own hand when he despairs of his country or of military success, we need not turn back the pages of history to search for instances; we may examine recent cases which have all the completeness of detail and all the instructiveness that clinical demonstration in the wards of an hospital possesses, as compared with the reading of the medical observations recorded by ancient physicians.

In the accounts we receive of the remarkable and mysterious civil war that has for some time past been devastating China, we constantly hear of defeated generals and soldiers who voluntarily sever their connexion with a world in which they could not prevail. India, again, the land of mystic philosophy, still teems with examples of suicides that bear all the characters of acts of devotion, and which we cannot attribute to the influence of insanity, unless we are prepared to maintain that the entire philosophy and religion of the Brahmins and Hindoos are but phenomena of insanity also. The "Bhagavad-Gita" inculcates doctrines and precepts which lead to the annihilation of will; which, in their ecstatic sublimity, seem to lift their votaries out of the material world, and which reduce self-murder to an act of indifference or of fate :

"Wert thou loaded with sins, thou mightest pass the abyss in the bark of Wisdom. Know, Ardjouna, that as natural fire reduces wood to ashes, so the fire of true wisdom consumes all action. The presumptuous man believes himself the author of his actions; but all his actions spring from the necessary force and concentration of things."

Under such a creed, suicide is nothing more than the revolution of the hands of a watch which has been duly wound up. It implies neither criminality, nor sin, nor disease. What it does imply, is utter moral darkness, and the deepest intellectual degradation. If we would estimate the mental conditions and the motives which led the Stoics and Epicureans of ancient times to self-murder, we are not reduced to the contemplation of historic examples. In the bosom of modern civilisation are nursed men who, by their scepticism concerning religion, future life, or posthumous rewards and punishments, may be

studied as the representatives of those who adopted for their maxim, "Mori licet cui vivere non placet." Do we believe that Seneca was mad, or Diogenes or Zeno, or Lucretius or Diodorus? No; in judging the deaths of these philosophers and historians, we take into account the nature and tendency of their philosophical and theological doctrines. Lucretius formulised his creed in the following words:

"Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum;

Quandò quidem natura animi mortalis habetur!"

Plato, in the depth or the sublimity of error, thus expounded the liberty and the restrictions of suicide: "He is not to be blamed who kills himself, unless he does so without the authority of the magistrates, or without being driven to it by a painful and intolerable position, or by the dread of a future filled with misfortunes." Pliny, in the arrogance of human pride, was not content even with this limitation. He professed to see in the power which man possessed, through the gift of reason, to leave this world at his pleasure, a mark not only of his superiority over all other created beings, but even over the gods themselves: "Imperfectæ verò in homine naturæ præcipua solatia, ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nec sibi potest mortem consciscere, si velit ; quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitæ pœnis." And Cicero, whose timid nature, more, perhaps, than his reason or his sense of right, often restrained him, under the reverses and mortifications of his latter days, from carrying into effect a wish he no doubt experienced, has thus, whilst admitting a divine injunction against suicide, placed it in the power of every one to interpret the divine will at his pleasure: "The God who holds over us a sovereign power, will not allow us to quit this life without his permission; but when he has caused a just desire to do so to spring up within us, then the truly wise man should pass with pleasure from the gloom of this world to the celestial light." Are there not still men amongst us who hold opinions not essentially different from these? and is not suicide a logical consequence of such opinions? Take, for example, the death of Philip Strozzi. In the suicide of this man we witness the conflict of a mind in suspense between Christianity and the dogmas and examples of the heathen philosophers. Taken prisoner by the Grand Duke Cosmo I., and accused of participating in the assassination of Alexander I., he destroyed himself in order to avoid compromising his friends under the influence of the torture. This fragment of his last will would have been held up to the admiration of the ancient world; it excites a feeling of pity rather than of condemnation in the Christian heart; neither then nor now does it bear evidence of insanity

"To the liberating God. To remain no longer in the power of my barbarous enemies, who have unjustly and cruelly imprisoned me, and who might compel me, by the violence of tortures, to reveal things hurtful to my honour, to my friends, as has happened recently to the unfortunate Julian Gondi; I, Philip Strozzi, have taken the only resolution left to me, however fatal to my soul it seems to me, the resolution to put an end to my life by my own hands. I

recommend my soul to God, a merciful Sovereign, and humbly pray him, as the least grace, to accord it, for its last dwelling, the region where dwell the souls of Cato of Utica, and of those virtuous men who have made a like end."

The history of philosophy may, perhaps, be considered by the Christian divine or the Christian physician as the history of human error; but neither will so far surrender his judgment to his religious or pathological preconceptions as to regard the history of philosophy as the history of sin or of mental alienation. If this be granted, if we attribute the voluntary deaths of such men as Zeno, Seneca, and Diodorus to the influence of a false philosophy, how can we refuse to attribute the deaths of such men as the Girondins, Pétion, Barbarossa, Roland, and Condorcet, to the same cause? Did all false philosophy, all error, disappear from the minds of men with the birth of Christianity? Or has the cerebral organization of man changed since the days of pagan philosophy? Is that same subjection to those doctrines which inculcate it as a right, if not a duty, to commit suicide, to be cited as an illustration of a peculiar philosophy in an ancient Roman, and as a proof of disease in the modern sceptic? No; the common sense of mankind rejects these absolute and special conclusions. Howsoever pure we may esteem our own religious faith, however true our scientific knowledge, we cannot but recognise the fact that false religion and error have been kept alive in all ages, and still exist in the heart of the most refined disciples of modern civilization. Is not the couplet of Voltaire something more than a mere verbal translation from the olden philosophers? is it not the confession of faith of many a modern sceptic ?—

"Quand on a tout perdu, et qu'on n'a plus d'espoir,

La vie est un opprobre, et la mort un devoir."

To pronounce, then, as did the medieval priest, that all suicide is sin, or to contend, as some modern physicians, jurists, and others do, that all suicide is disease, is to worship the idola Specûs-to hold up between our eyes and the object to be observed a refracting and discolouring medium, that presents a false image to our perception, and thus destroys the foundation of accurate judgment.

But it is not only in causing suicide that false opinion acts. False opinion has, in all ages, led to the commission of other acts scarcely less to be condemned by sound reason. The assassination of Julius Cæsar sprang from the same exalted patriotism as the suicide of Brutus; but it is not pretended that the assassination was the act of a madman. Like moral perversion, like social and political doctrines, will lead one man to murder his fellow-man, another to sacrifice himself. To single out suicide from the list of offences, to assign this alone to insanity, and to attribute the rest to false opinion, is an arbitrary distortion of the truth, a wanton inconsistency that prejudges the whole question, and defies all argument.

We have gone thus far in the exposure of what to many must seem an absurdity too palpable to need refutation, because it is impossible