Chapter VIII: Front Matter (8)

If light be the efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light, therefore, must also be eliminated.

Morselli suggests that suicide is influenced by the first heat of early spring and summer, which "seizes upon the organism not yet acclimated and still under the influence of the cold season." But is there any such thing as winter debility, and, if so, why should it last until June? Many physicians, on the other hand, assert that during the period of early summer the organism, instead of being debilitated, is working at a high tension, that every function of mind and body is then more active than at any other period of the year, and, that, consequently, there is then greater liability to sudden mental and physical collapse. But there is no evidence to show that suicides, generally, are caused by seasonal overtension and subsequent collapse.

Goldwin Smith thinks that with the revival of vitality in the spring and early summer "all feelings and impressions become more lively," those that impel to suicide among the rest. But if all the feelings "become more lively," why do not the stimulated sensations of joy and pleasure on a beautiful day in June overcome, or at least evenly balance, the stimulated sensations of suffering and unhappiness?

_Influence of Environment on Self-Destruction_

None of these explanations is at all satisfactory, and it seems to me that the solution of the problem is to be found, not in the mere physical action of light, heat, or weather on the human body, but in the influence of the whole environment on the human mind. Sir Arthur Helps was the first, so far as I know, to suggest that the increased tendency to suicide in spring and summer is due to a psychological rather than a physical cause. Speaking, in "Realmah," of the fact that suicides are more frequent on pleasant days than on unpleasant ones, he says: "Perhaps it is because, on these beautiful days, the higher powers seem to be more beneficent; and the wretch overladen with misery thinks that he can trust more to their mercy."

This explanation is little more satisfactory than the others; but it does, nevertheless, recognize and take into account the influence of the environment on a preexisting emotional state. It errs only in interpretation. The smiling, happy, joyous aspect of Nature in June does not inspire the unhappy man with confidence in the beneficence and mercy of the higher powers. On the contrary, it shows him that the higher powers pay no attention at all to his feelings and have no sympathy whatever with his grief. The blue skies, sunshine, leafy trees, and singing birds, which make up the environment of June, add to the happiness of the man who is happy already, but they intensify, by contrast, the misery of the man who is already miserable. In November and December, when all is dark, bare, and cheerless, Nature seems to be in sympathy with the unhappy man's mood, and from that voiceless, pitying sympathy of the great World-Mother he derives a certain sustaining comfort and consolation. In June his mood is the same, but the mood of Nature has changed. The great World-Mother no longer sympathizes with his grief, but laughs him to scorn with her sunshine, her blossoming flowers, her leafy trees, and her jubilation of mating birds. He looks about him and thinks: "Everybody is happy, everything is rejoicing. I am the solitary exception; I am the only living thing that is out of place." And then there comes upon him a heartbreaking sense of loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation, as if the great, happy world had cast him off and gone on its way singing. He has thought of suicide before--he has thought of it often; and now, when the world, in its triumphant gladness, ignores his very existence, when there is no longer sympathy, nor pity, nor any further hope of a share in the happiness that he sees about him, it seems to him that the time for self-destruction has come. Whether he be a Russian, an American, or a Japanese, he can observe and he can feel: and when he sees that the whole world is jubilant, while he himself is wretched, he becomes more acutely conscious than ever before of his loneliness and misery, and resolves to give up the struggle and get out of the way of the world's laughing, singing, summer-carnival procession. He ends his life; and in some Russian, American, or Japanese table of statistics his death adds one more to the suicides in June.[20]

The close relation that exists between suicide and war was first brought to my attention by the sudden and remarkable decrease of suicide in the United States in 1898, the year of the war with Spain. Instead of increasing that year, as it had every previous year for more than a decade, the number of suicides decreased suddenly from 6,600 to 5,920, a falling off of 680 cases. Then, when the war in the Philippines followed the war in Cuba, the number was again reduced by 580 cases. When, however, in 1900, we began to lose interest in the Philippines and to think of our own home troubles and trials, the number of suicides rose suddenly from 5,340 to 7,245, an increase of 1,905 cases in two years. The decrease in the suicide rate during the war was nearly 16 per cent., and the increase after the war about 23 per cent.

_War As a Deterrent to Suicide_

This struck me as a phenomenon interesting enough to warrant investigation, and I began study of it by looking up the statistics of suicide in the national capital. It seemed to me that if the decrease in 1898 was due to a general economic cause, it would not be particularly noticeable in the city of Washington, for the reason that Washington is not a manufacturing or business center. If, on the other hand, the fall in the suicide rate was really due to the war as a specific cause, it would be most marked at the nation's capital, where the war attracted most attention and created most excitement. I went to the District Health Office and made an examination of the suicide records for a term of six years, beginning with 1895 and ending with 1900. I found not only that the depression in the Washington suicide curve was precisely synchronous with that of the national suicide curve, but that it was much deeper, amounting, in fact, to a sudden decrease of fifty per cent.

As suicides are tabulated in the Health Office of the District of Columbia by months, I was able to ascertain, furthermore, that the decrease began, not in the first month of the year, but in the spring months, when the war excitement became epidemic. Normally, the suicide rate should have risen, from January to June, in accordance with the seasonal law; but, instead of so doing, it fell rapidly at the very time when it should have been approaching its maximum. The colored population of the city, taken separately, was affected in the same way and to an even greater degree, the number of suicides among the blacks falling off fifty-six per cent., as compared with fifty per cent. among the whites. The number of suicides in both races remained low throughout the year 1899, and then rose suddenly in 1900, an almost precise correspondence with the suicide curve of the nation as a whole.

During our Civil War the suicidal tendency was affected in the same way, but to a much greater extent. I have not been able to find mortality statistics of the whole country for the period in question, but in New York City the average rate of suicide in the five years of the Civil War was forty-two per cent. lower than the average for the five preceding years, and forty-three per cent. lower than the average for the five subsequent years. In the State of Massachusetts, where accurate statistics were kept, the number of suicides decreased seventeen per cent. in the five-year period from 1861 to 1865, as compared with the five-year period from 1856 to 1860.

In Europe the restraining influence of war upon the suicidal impulse is equally marked. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 decreased the suicide rate of each country about fourteen per cent. The Franco-German war of 1870-71 lowered the suicide rate of Saxony 8.0 per cent., that of Prussia 11.4 per cent., and that of France 18.7 per cent. The reduction was greatest in France, because the German invasion of that country made the war excitement there much more general and intense than it was in Saxony or Prussia.

An explanation of the decrease of suicide in time of war may be found, perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide, among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man might resolve to end his life, and might load a revolver with the intention of shooting himself; but if he should happen to see a couple of his neighbors fighting in his front door-yard, he would probably lay the revolver aside, for a time, and watch the combat. The cause of his unhappiness would still remain, but the current of his thought would suddenly be diverted into a new channel and his despondency would give way to the excitement of a fresh and vivid interest. War acts upon men in the same way, but with greater force.

Then, too, war restrains suicide by strengthening the bonds of social sympathy and drawing large masses of people more closely together. The unhappy man always thinks of himself as lonely, isolated, and out of harmony with his environment; but when, as a result of the victories or defeats of war, he finds himself participating in the triumph or sharing the grief of thousands of other persons, the mere consciousness of sympathetic association with his fellow-men becomes a source of comfort and consolation to him and makes his life more endurable. But war is not the only agency that exerts a restraining influence upon self-destruction. Any great calamity which causes intense public excitement, and which at the same time draws people together in friendly sympathy and cooeperation, lowers the suicide rate. The calamity may greatly intensify suffering, and may make life, for a time, almost intolerable; but it does not increase the number of persons who try to escape from life; on the contrary, it reduces it.

_San Francisco Earthquake Decreased Suicides_

A striking illustration of this fact was furnished by San Francisco in 1906. Before the earthquake and fire of April 18 the suicides in that city averaged twelve a week. After the earthquake, when the whole population was homeless, destitute, and exposed to hardships and privations of every kind, there were only three suicides in two months. The decrease, therefore, in the suicide rate was more than 97 per cent. This surprising result of a disheartening and depressing calamity was due partly to the excitement of life under new and extraordinary conditions, and partly to the feeling, which every man had, that he was enduring and working with a host of sympathetic comrades, and not suffering and striving alone. If life were always vividly interesting, as it was in San Francisco after the earthquake, and if all men worked and suffered together as the San Franciscans did for a few weeks, suicide would not end ten thousand American lives every year, as it does now.

The dependence of suicide upon such conditions as age, sex, occupation, and religion does not offer any problem as difficult and baffling as that involved in the relation of suicide to weather, nor any as curious and suggestive as that which connects suicide with war; but there is hardly a phase of the subject that does not present some more or less interesting question. The researches of Durkheim and Gubski show that, after the period of childhood, the tendency to suicide increases steadily with advancing age. In France, for example, if the population be segregated in groups comprising all persons ten to twenty years of age, all persons twenty to thirty years of age, all persons thirty to forty years of age, and so on, by decades, the annual number of suicides per million rises as follows: first group 56, second group 130, third 155, fourth 204, fifth 217, sixth 274, seventh 317, and the rate finally reaches its maximum in the group that comprises persons more than eighty years of age.

In the United States, the rate increases from 128 per million, in the age group comprising persons under forty-five, to 300 per million in the age group comprising persons over sixty-five. The figures vary in different countries, according to the hereditary national suicide tendencies; but the steady increase with advancing age is common to all. These statistics would seem to support the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, and to prove that the longer one lives the less one wants to live; but it must not be forgotten that the suicide rate is a measure of exceptional unhappiness, not of the general welfare.

In the suicidal tendencies of the sexes there is, as might be expected, a very great difference. In all countries and in all parts of the world, suicides among women are far less frequent than among men. The ratio varies from one to two to two to five. This difference is generally attributed to the supposed fact that women are sheltered and protected by men, as well as by their domestic environment, and that, consequently, they suffer less from the wear and tear of life; but I doubt very much the adequacy of this explanation. The life of women, in the world at large, is quite as hard as that of men, and often harder. In the higher and wealthier classes of society women may be, and doubtless are, sheltered and protected; but in the poorer classes they take their full share of the suffering, even if they do not bear the brunt of the struggle.

The hundreds of Russian women who between 1877 and 1885 were exiled to eastern Siberia for political offenses had no shelter or protection whatever, and must necessarily have suffered more than the exiled men from the hardships and privations of banishment; and yet, I am quite sure that I understate the fact when I say that the number of suicides among the men was at least five times greater than it was among the women. The exiled men themselves admitted to me that when it came to the endurance of suffering against which no fight could be made and from which there was no escape, the women were greatly their superiors. The infrequency of self-destruction among women, as compared with that among men, seems to me to be due, not to their comparative immunity from suffering, but to three other causes, namely, first, a greater power of patient, passive endurance, when there is no fight to be made; second, a mind and heart that are more influenced by feelings and beliefs that may be called religious; and, third, a peculiar capacity for self-restraint and self-preservation, based on the maternal instinct, that is, on closer and more intimate relations with, stronger love for, and greater devotion to young children.

A study of the relation that suicide bears to occupation discloses some interesting and noteworthy facts. The first is that soldiers, both in Europe and in the United States, must be put in a class by themselves, for the reason that the suicide rate of army officers and men is so much higher than that of the populations to which they belong that they can hardly be included in the same category. In Prussia, for example, the proportion of military suicides to civilian suicides is 1-1/2 to 1; in England 2-1/2 to 1; in Italy 5 to 1; in Austria 10 to 1; and in Russia nearly 11 to 1. Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to kill themselves is 8-1/2 times that of adult men in civil life.

This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment, and where the relations between officers and men are fairly sympathetic and cordial, there would seem to be fewer reasons for unhappiness and suffering than in the military service of Italy, Austria, or Russia. The American soldier is generally well taken care of and well treated; and while his life, in time of peace, is not exciting, it is easier and less monotonous than that of a factory operative, and it is hard to understand why he should be abnormally disposed to self-destruction. His suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil population is, and for the same reasons.

_Professional Classes Furnish Most Suicides_

Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners, bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half to three times as great as that of the population generally.

Clergymen, however, who also constitute an educated professional class, have a suicide rate which is only half that of the population as a whole, and this is undoubtedly due to the restraining influence of religion, which is much stronger in clergymen than in laymen. The relation of suicide to religion raises a number of curious and interesting questions, but, unfortunately, the religious factor is so involved with other factors in the complicated problem of self-destruction that it is almost impossible to isolate it so as to study it alone. For example, the suicide rate of Protestant Christians in the northern part of Ireland is twice that of Roman Catholics in the southern part; but here education comes in as a complication: the Protestants are generally better educated than the Catholics, and their higher suicide rate may be due to their education and not to the form of their religion. In Europe generally, the tendency to suicide is much greater among both Protestants and Catholics than among Jews; but here education, race, and economic condition all come in as complicating factors, so that it is impossible to credit the Jewish faith alone with the lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient cause may be the Catholic practice of confessing to priests, which probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite of misfortune and depression.

The Salvation Army, in attempting to lessen self-destruction by opening "anti-suicide bureaus" in large cities, and by inviting persons who are contemplating suicide to visit these bureaus and talk over their troubles, is virtually introducing a system of confession which, so far as this particular evil is concerned, resembles that of the Catholic Church.

In view, however, of the conflicting nature of the evidence, and the extreme difficulty of disentangling religious factors from other important factors, I doubt the possibility of drawing any trustworthy conclusions with regard to the dependence of suicide upon religious belief. It may be said, as a matter of record, that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest among Protestant Christians, next largest among Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greeks, and lowest among Mohammedans and Jews; but the differences are not certainly due to religion.

The dependence of suicide upon nationality and race presents a number of problems of great interest, but of extraordinary difficulty and complexity. I can state a few of these problems, but I cannot solve any of them.

Among the highest suicide rates in Europe are those of Saxony and Denmark, and among the lowest those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. You may perhaps conclude, from this, that the tendency to self-destruction is much greater among the Slavs and Scandinavians of the north than it is among the Latin peoples of the south, and that the differences are due to latitude or race; but your specious generalization is shattered when you discover that the suicide rates of Norway and Russia, both northern countries inhabited by Scandinavians and Slavs, are almost as low as those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all southern countries inhabited by Latins.

From an ethnological point of view, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are nearly homogeneous Scandinavian states, and we should therefore expect their suicide rates to be nearly if not quite identical; but the rate of Denmark is twice that of Sweden and three times that of Norway.

The Slavs of Bohemia do not differ ethnologically from the Slavs of Dalmatia, but the suicide rate of the one group is 158 per million, while that of the other is only 14 per million. Saxony is not far away, geographically, from Belgium; but the suicide rate of the former is 324 per million, while that of the latter is only 128 per million.

I am unable to offer even a conjectural solution of the problems involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of educational culture and economic well being.

_Germany's High Suicide Rates_

The extremely high suicide rate of the Germanic peoples long ago attracted the attention of European sociologists, but, so far as I know, it has never been satisfactorily explained. If it were limited to adults it might possibly be attributed to economic causes, particularly to the rapid development of manufacturing industry, which seems everywhere to increase the suicidal tendency; but self-destruction in Germany is almost as common among children as among grown people. Between 1883 and 1903 there were 1,125 suicides among the pupils of the public schools in Prussia alone, and most of them were of boys and girls under fifteen years of age. An investigation made by the ministry of public instruction showed that this prevalence of suicide among children was not due to the conditions of modern life in cities, inasmuch as the proportion of cases was fully as large in places of the smallest size as in crowded centers of population. It seemed to be due, rather, to an inherent suicidal tendency in the race.

Racial characteristics, however, do not by any means account for the extraordinary differences in suicide rates that we find among the European peoples, as shown in the following table:[21]

EUROPEAN PEOPLES GROUPED RACIALLY

NUMBER OF SUICIDES PER MILLION INHABITANTS