The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1889-06-15
CURE FOR SUICIDE.
An Inevitable Ailment OF the Time and
How to Treat Jt.

An Inevitable Ailment OF the Time and
How to Treat tt
The spread OF suicide is alarming
some of our contemporaries, and that
they should be alarmed is not to be
wondered at, perhaps, il the statement
made Is correct that 'within the last
three months three clergymen, three
postmasters, six physicians, twelve
well-to-do merchants, seven Office
holders, three lawyers, three bankers,
four railroad officials, two artists, three
mayors, one journalist, one army Off
Ger and two capitalists have, for various
reasons, voluntarily shuflled off this
mortal coil" But in viewing such q
record a little philosophy is desirable.
An increase of suicide is not necessarily
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
condition is unbearable, but because
some 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 miserable OF people, speaking
materially, are the least given to sui
cide-as, for instance, the Spaniards
and the Italians. Suicide is vastly
more prevalent among the better nour-
ished and better educated Germans
than among either of the nations we
have named; the thrifty and intelligent
Danes and Saxons are most given to
suicide of all the peoples of Europe,
while squalid and benighted 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 malady Of cultivation-a
characteristic, it may be said, OF an
advanced and even prosperous state Of
society. In the United States, where,
in the five years between 1882 and 1887,
1926 persons took their own lives,
only 270 of these deaths were attribut-
able to destitution. 1t is to lend the
heartache," and not to escape unbear-
able material conditions, that people
take their lives; and this heartache or
world WEAKNESS in quite as distinctly
traceable to the increased sensitiveness
of organization on the part of culti-
waited generation as is the delight in
progress, in society, in art, in music,
and in literature, that also char
acteristic of this epoch of the world.
The prevalence of suicide is in many
ways lamentable; but there is no
reason why the world should alarm it.
self unduly about it, or, treating it as
if it were due to some preventable
cause, like an epidemic of diphtheria,
should call out, What is to be donep"
Nothing is to be done, at least by So
ciety as a whole. Suicide is an newt
able ailment of a time, which, on the
whole, is the best time that the world
has ever had.
But though society can do nothing to
restrain suicide, the individual being
supreme in at least this respect, some-
thing may be done, and effectively,
too, by the individual who feels the
urging to self-destruction strong within
him. If no consideration of the here
after gives such a one pause, it is in
his power to put himself in healthy
harmony with nature, if he will, by
obeying the philosophical injunction to
"look outward and not in;' to admit
to his life the light of nature-frst
comprehending that nature is not a
thing exterior to him, but that it is
himself and he is nature-and not for
ever shut himself within the darkness
Of a partial and selfish view of life;
and, examining in this light his con-
dition, to determine whether the leth-
argy and despair which impel him to
suicide are not of his own making, and
the natural gift of hope and
health are not still within recovery. -
Boston Transcript.