, 1889-06-22
4 CURE EoR SUICIDE.
a Claim That Self Destruction Is Proof
of a Higher Civilization.

A Claim That Self Destruction Is Proof
of a Higher Civilization.
An increase of suicide is not neces-
sarily a proof that the world is growing
more unhappy. On the contrary, it may
mean that the general state of society Is
improving. Men and women do not kill
themselves because their material condi-
ton is u~nbearable, but because sone
mental state leads them to prefer the
sleep of death, no matter what dreams
may come" TO the perPlexity and moral
tension of existence. The most misera-
BILE of people, speaking materially, are
the least given to suicide-as, for in
stance, the Irish, the S%paniards and the
Italians. Suicide is vastly more prevalent
among the better nourished and better
educated Germans than among either of
the nations we nave named; the thrifty
and intelligent Danes and Saxons are
most given TO suicide of all the peoples
of Europe, while squalid and b~enighted
Spain has the lowest suicide percentage.
If We compare the epochs of the world,
we find that in Rome, in the days of the
glory of the republic and the empire,
suicide was much more prevalent than it
was in the darkness of the middle ages.
Suicide is a malady of cultivation-a
Characteristic, it may be said, of an ad-
yanced and ever prosperous state of So
ciety. In the United States, where, in
the five years between 1882 and 1887,
s,226 persons took their own lives, only
go of these deaths were attributable to
restitution 1t Is TO lend the ~heartache,"
and not to escape unbearable material
conditions, that people take their lives;
and this heartache OF world WEAKNESS
IL quite as distinctly traceable TO the in
creased sonsitiveness of organization on
the part of n cultivated generation rs is
tho delight in progress, in society, in art,
in music and in literature, that Is also
characteristic of this epoch of the world.
The prevalence of suicide is in many
ways l~amentable; but there Is no reason
why the world should alarm itself undu.
ly about 1t, or, treating it as if it were
duo TO some preventable cause, like an
epidemic Of ~diphthcria, should call out:
"What is TO be done?" Nothing Is to be
done, at least by society as a whole. Sui
eide Is an inevitable ailmcnt of u time,
which, on the whole, is the best time
that the world has ever had.
But though society can do nothing 10
restrain suicide, the individual being SUI
preme in Mt least this respect, something
may be done, and effectively, too, by the
individual who finds the urging to self
destruction strong within him. If no
consideration of tho hereafter gives such
a one pause, it is in his power to put
himself in health harmony with nature,
If no will, by obeying tho philosophical
injunction TO 'look outward and not in;"
to admit 10 his life tho light of nature
first compromising that nature is not
n thing exterior to him, but that it is
md he is nature-and not for
ever shut himself within tho darkness of
a partial and selfish view of life; and,
examining in this light his condition, to
determine whether tho lethargy and de-
spair which impel him to suicide are not
of his own making, and whether the
natural gifts of hope and health are not
still within recovery.-Boston Tran
script.