Weekly Trinity journal., 1858-02-20
G ontaKion of suicide. E.


dead house for refuge. The records Of each week
are full Of suicides. Men and women are digging
their graves with their own hands, and wrapping
shrouds about them, lie down to wait for death.
They are leaping from the parapets of time into
the profound region of gloom from which no ex-
plorer has returned. They are descending vol
UNFAIRLY to the dank bridal chamber of mortality
and death, nor shrink in dismay at the nameless
reptiles that crawl about the place in which they
seek sanctuary from the ever pursuing, bodiess
demon that hunts them from the world.
In an article of great ingenuity and purity of
style, the San Francisco Herald accounts for the
frequency of selfmurders, independently of phys
ical causes such as loss of property, and
suffering The writer believes that there is some
m oral infuence-some magnetic power at work
by which minds of like temperament and charac-
ter are Influenced by the act Of the suicide. He
believes, further, that some marked example, re-
lated in all its details by the public prints, i'm
presses itself on minds of q similar structure
which, la6oring under like agencies and during
the same condition of atmosphere, leads to the
commission OF similar crimes. Instances are Civ
en- in which persons influenced by other causes
have been induced to Commit the same act by
hearing the acts of suicides related and dwelt on
in all their details.
So far as the influence Of circumstances are con.
cerned, we agree with the Herald, and unite with
it in condemning the brutality of graphic mar
rators of lamentable particulars. We are dis
gusted with the descriptions given of public exc
cutions and acts of felo de Sc by persons whose
descriptive powers should be confined to the pri-
vate notebooks of dead-hosse, or to the journal
of a sickly student training his nerves and stom-
ach to endure the atmosphere and spectacle of a
dissecting room. But on such things as we'll as
Others fools will write until death wrings the
mschevous instrument from their useless fingers.
We are hardly prepared, however, to believe that
suicides are occasioned more by magnetic or
sympathetic causes than by physical causes con-
nected with the business condition of the indi-
vidua. A thousand persons of sound mind see
an individual perish by violence, and all rush
from the place of danger. None linger near the
| spot unless it be some one under she influence of
drunken insanity. They look into the prisoner s
cell and none are willing to wear his chain or
share his solitude. They witness the execution Of
q felon without following him on the scaffold or
emulatng his crimes for the purpose, alone, of
dying death like his. In all that great assem-
blage, surely, there would be some spectator
whose temperament and sympathies so nearly APP
proximated the mental organization Of the fclon,
that some demonstration would betray the spec
tator impeled by tie mysterious agent which
links together minds of peculiar status We
do not deny the existence Of a sort of inter men
tai telegraph by which persons are, without
any outward demonstration, or even contiguity,
made aware of the mental condition of others Its
effects are more or less perceptble in the condi-
| tions of hatred and love. Let an individual con-
ceive violent dislike for another, and however
carefully he may conceal the operations of his
mind that other person will be ever ready to meet
him halfway in quarrel, unless restrained by
moral influences or motives of interest. Let an
other form an attachment for a stranger and he
will always find the person responsive to over
lures of friendship Let the most indemonstra-
tive and bashful boy feel the kindlngs Of love in
his bosom for one of hundred assembled of the
opposite sex, and che person loved will be made
aware of her admirers preference, without word
or look different from the demonstrations of
others, and will blush and be embarrassed in his
presence. The assumption is strengthened pY the
fact that when person enters room where an
other is sleeping be his ingress never so noise
less the sleeper becomes restless, and soon wakes
through the presence of the other who may have
stood all the time motionless as the furniture in
the room. But we do not believe such agency is
of sufficient power to drive one to violent death
Such act we think dependant on the worldly cir
cumstances that influence the individuals hap
piness, or superinduce disease of the mind
which gives the soul fictitious courage to go
out to meet death in his own domains Disap-
pointments following disaster, broken hopes and
wrecked ambition, debauchery with its attendant
torturng fends, avarice with his fingers clutch
ing empty air, love with his idol carried to pro-
fame temples, and despair clutching the skull with
taons of constructing iron, some of the causes
that drive the soul out upon shoreless sea to
cleave the murky clouds of Erebus with its wings,
uncertain of Fighting place or Of window in
the ark