Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1881-06-08
GROWING EVIL.

SOMETHING THAT SHOULD DE CHECKED.
A suicidal mania appears to have
recently taken possession of the people.
The latest case, and one embodying
tragic phases enough to satisfy the most
morhidly sensational appetite, is report
ed from New York. Efiie Person, aged
fourteen, bright and charming in dis.
position and blessed with surroundings
that ought to have rendered life to her
indeed worth living, deliberately slew
herself because her father had COM
planned of the loss of money from his
purse, and she found that he attached
suspicion to members of his family.
Such case as this presents q startling
development of the suicidal tendency.
Buckle says that Suicide is merely a
product of the general condition of
society" Pascal speaks of it as one of
the methods of seeking happiness.
"Happiness," he says sis the object of
all the actions of men even of those
who kill themselves" Yet the instincts
of nature revolt against the idea of an
individual improving his condition by
the voluntary suppression of his exist
ence.
Suicide is the most supremely selfish,
the most exclusively personal, the most
positively unsocial of all forms of graft
tications. Nevertheless, the progressive
increase of suicide in the civilized world
during the last hundred years is clearly
traceable to circumstances of social
pressure. The maximum rate at which
people kill themselves is in the great
cities, where thought is most active,
feeling most rebellious, and want and
melancholy are most often associated.
Statistics show that the increasing
rate CT suicides has conceded with the
modern extension of popular knowledge,
schooling and reading They also show
that self-killing is much more prevalent
among men than among women, three
men killing themselves where one wo.
man kills herself, This is very sug-
gestive fact. 1t is to be inferred that
women kill themselves less because
they are more religious, more resigned
to suffering, more controlled by sense
of duty to others. But while it should
be the object of education to impart
these restraining qualities to the male
sex, it is to be feared that social and
educational conditions really tend to
strip them away from both sexes.
Children in the great cities, and in
the smaller ones, too, for that matter,
are sent to the school-houses, are in
structed fairly, it may be admitted, so
far as book-cramming goes, but, beyond
that, to how great an extent is moral
culture attended to? How far do the
primary duties of life, the lasting obi
cations of the individual to society,
become matter for either parental or
pedagogical tutelage? In what measure
is that teaching impaired which fits the
man or woman imbued with a supreme
sense of moral responsibility? 1t is not
here charged that the moral side of
education is totally neglected, but it
certainly is too much neglected, and so
far as this neglect extends, individuals,
families and communities must suffer.
In the case that is cited, an unnatural
is shown, which, under the
force of correct training, would never
have existed. Had healthy tone been
given to the girls moral nature, along
with the ordinary instruction she is pre- |
sumed to have received, her organism,
however finely strung, would have been
able to throw off the suicidal impulse.
Just so the rule may be applied in gen.
eral. For every i'll that human flesh is
heir to, the self regarding fashion Of the
day suggests the heroic remedy-the
waters Of Lethe. 1t is mischief of
growth, the limit to which
will not be reached until a radical re-
form is introduced which will attack the
very foundation of the evil, and that
cannot be attained save in the correct
moral training Of the people. Gaireston
Ners. ]