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Abstract
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The most efficient preventive of this crime is a strong reprobative public sentiment. It is regarded with a kind of horror. There is an instinctive drawing back from the self-murderer on the part of most people, as if there was no wish to have anything to do with a character around which there gathers at once a discreditable mystery. Almost the first inquiry on hearing of a suicide is, what evil has he done? If seems to be a general feeling that it has some connection with remorse, which, in its turn, is suggestive of crime. And so intense is the unex pressed sentiment, that suicide has been committed to cover some crime, or to escape the imputation of wrong; the very first effort on the part of friends, is to promote an impression that it was the result of insanity. We unhesitatingly assert, that the palliation, of suicide is a wrong done to society and to good morals. Let it be a deep, a general, an abiding sentiment, that suicide and criminality are inseparable, and an important step will have at once been taken towards its prevention. Some years ago, this species of depravity became so prevalent among the women, the authorities decreed that the body of every such person found should be hung naked at the main entrance of the town. The effect was an instantaneous cessa tion of the unnatural act. We do not undertake to say that every suicide is a legal criminal, but we do say unhesitatingly, that a suicide is a cow ard and a fool. A coward, because he runs from trouble; a fool, because he rushes into the presence of his Maker with a dagger in his hand and a sin in his heart.
The papers of the country, secular and religious, have made a great ado lately, about the suicide of an unmarried man, aged thirty-five, of an irreproachable private character, up to his last act; a man of genius and of education. He was an enthusiastic " Spiritualist," and the use made of the fact is, " Spiritualism is a pernicious delusion." And we almost grit our teeth in the impatience which attends the expression of the sentiment. Fair play is a jewel the world over. Let us have it here. If every creed is to be voted false, wicked and dangerous, because an advocate of it has been driven to suicide, then every creed under the sun, and every great pursuit, is false, wicked, and dangerous, our Holy Religion not excepted: The wonder to our mind is, that any man, with even moderate pretensions to a logical mind, would allow himself to employ such a baseless argument. There is not one of us that would not regard with contempt the man who would urge as a reason, religion was a delusion, because persons are every now and then precipitating themselves into eternity as the effect of " strong religious excitement, " as it is benevolently termed.
As stated in our December number, an eminent divine seeks affectionately to cloak over the self-destruction of a talented brother, by the argument that his mind was unbalanced by intense devotion to some particular branch of study, his gen eral health being at the same time much impaired; and the argument is given, with an editorial backing, in the columns of one of the oldest, most widely circulated and ably edited reli gious newspapers in the United States; and what is more wonderful still, without rebuke, as far as we have seen, by a single Christian editor in the land. But when a " Spiritualist" commits suicide, scarcely a paper fails to blazon it abroad with various exclamatory marks and startling phrases -- Horrible effects of Spiritualism 111 and the like.
Now compare the two cases: both were unmarried, of about the same age; both educated; both possessing mental qualities entitling to the name of "genius;" and both, too, labored under bodily disease of an aggravated character.
The view which we take of these cases, and hence their intro duction here, is, that the crime of the self-destroyer is not chargeable logically, either to religion, to scientific research, or to spiritualism, but is chargeable to the sin of being in wretched ill-health. No man, ordinarily, in the exercise of a moderate degree of intelligence as to the physiological laws of his body, can labor under wretched ill-health, except from unavoidable occurrences...
From PubMed Central
Language: en |