CHAPTER 2 SUICIDE AND NORMAL PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES—RACE, HEREDITY

BUT it might be that the tendency to suicide is based on the constitution of the individual without special dependence on the abnormal states just considered. It might consist of purely psychological phenomena without necessarily being associated with any perversion of the nervous system. Why should there not occur among men a tendency to renounce existence, which is neither a monomania nor a form of mental alienation or neurasthenia? It might even be considered an established fact if, as several writers on suicide have declared, each race had a characteristic suicide-rate of its own. For a race is defined and differentiated from others only by organic-psychic characteristics. If then suicide really varied with races, it would be established that it is closely connected with some organic disposition.

But does this relation exist?

I

First, what is a race? A definition is especially necessary because not merely the layman but anthropologists themselves use the word in quite varying senses. Yet underneath the different formulae suggested for it, two basic ideas are usually found: the ideas of resemblance and filiation. One or the other occupies the first place according to different schools.

Recently race has been understood to mean an aggregate of individuals with clearly common traits, but traits furthermore due to derivation from a common stock. Whenever, under the influence of any cause, one or more members of the same sexual generation display a variation separating them from the rest of the species, and this variation, instead of disappearing in the next generation, becomes progressively established in the organism through heredity, it gives birth to a race. In this sense M. de Quatrefages could define race as “the total of similar individuals of the same species who transmit characteristics of a primitive sort by sexual propagation.” Thus understood, race would differ from species in that the original couples from whom the different races of one species derive, would in turn all be derived from a single couple. The concept would thus be clearly circumscribed and defined by the special method of filiation to which it owes its source.

Unfortunately, if this formula is accepted, the existence and area of a race can be established only by historical and ethnographic research, the results of which are always uncertain; for only very uncertain probabilities can be determined in questions of origin. Moreover, it is not certain that there are today human races answering to this definition; for, due to crossings in every direction, each of the existing varieties of our species comes from very different origins. Without any other criterion being given, it would therefore be very hard to discover the relations of the various races to suicide, for no one could say with accuracy where they begin and end. Besides, M. de Quatrefages’ concept errs in prejudging the solution of a problem as yet by no means scientifically settled. It assumes in fact that racial characteristics are formed through evolution, that they are fixed in the organism only through heredity. This is contested by a whole school of anthropology that has taken the name of polygenists. According to this school, instead of being derived as a whole from one and the same couple, in the manner of biblical tradition, humanity has appeared either simultaneously or successively at different points on the globe. As these primitive stocks were formed independently of one another and in different environments, they differed from the beginning; hence, each of them would be a race. Therefore, the principal races would not have been formed by a progressive fixation of acquired differences, but from the beginning and all at once.

Since this large question is still unsettled, it would be contrary to sound method to introduce into the notion of race the idea of filiation or kinship. It is better defined by its immediate qualities, directly available to the observer, and without reference to the whole question of origin. Only two characteristics are left to mark race. First, it is a group of individuals who resemble one another. But so do members of a single faith or profession. The distinguishing characteristic is that the resemblances are hereditary. It is a type which, however originally formed, is now hereditarily transmissible. In this sense, Prichard wrote: “By the term race is understood any collection of individuals with a greater or less number of common characteristics transmissible by heredity, regardless of the origin of these characteristics.” M. Broca uses about the same terms: “The varieties of human kind,” he writes, “have received the name of races, which suggests the idea of a more or less direct filiation between the individuals of the same variety, but this neither affirmatively nor negatively determines the question of kinship between individuals of different varieties.”

Put thus, the question of the constitution of races becomes soluble but the word is then taken in such an extended sense that it becomes illusive. It no longer represents merely the most general branches of the species, the natural and relatively unchangeable divisions of humanity, but every sort of type. In fact, from this point of view each group of nations the members of which, due to their centuries-long intimate mutual relations, show partially hereditable similarities, would constitute a race. Thus we sometimes speak of a Latin race, an Anglo-Saxon race, etc. Only in this sense indeed can races still be regarded, as concrete, living factors of historical development. In the mingling of peoples, in the melting-pot of history, the great primitive and fundamental races have finally become so blended with each other that they have lost almost all individuality. If they have not totally disappeared, at least only vague features and scattered traits are found in imperfect combination with one another, forming no characteristic physiognomies. A human type thus constituted merely by the aid of often indefinite data as to height and cranial structure is not sufficiently consistent and fixed to have attributed to it much influence on the course of social phenomena. The more specialized and smaller types called races in the broad sense of the word are more clearly marked and necessarily have an historical role, since they are less the products of nature than of history. But they are far from objectively defined. We know little, for instance, of the exact differences between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon races. Everybody speaks of them in his own way with little scientific exactness.

These introductory remarks give warning that the sociologist must be very careful in searching for the influence of races on any social phenomenon. For to solve such problems the different races and their distinctions from each other must be known. This caution is the more essential because this anthropological uncertainty might well be due to the fact that the word “race” no longer corresponds to anything definite. Indeed, on the one hand, the original races have only a paleontological interest, and on the other the narrower groups so designated today seem to be only peoples or societies of peoples, brothers by civilization rather than by blood. Thus conceived, race becomes almost identical with nationality.

II

Yet let us agree that there are certain great types in Europe the most general characteristics of which can be roughly distinguished and among whom the peoples are distributed, and agree to give them the name of races. Morselli distinguishes four: the Germanic type, including as varieties the German, the Scandinavian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Flemish; the Celto-Roman type (Belgians, French, Italians, Spaniards); the Slav type and the Ural-Altaïc type. We mention the last only by courtesy, since it has too few representatives in Europe for its relations to suicide to be ascertainable. In fact only the Hungarians, the Finns and the people of some Russian provinces can be assigned to it. The other three races would be classified as follows according to the decreasing order of their aptitude for suicide: first the Germanic peoples, then the Celto-Romans, and finally the Slavs.

But can these differences really be imputed to the effects of race?

The hypothesis would be plausible if each group of peoples thus combined under a single name had an equally strong tendency to suicide. But the greatest differences exist between nations of the same race. While in general the Slavs have little inclination to self-destruction, Bohemia and Moravia are exceptions. The former has 158 suicides per million inhabitants and the second 136, while Carnida has only 46, Croatia 30, Dalmatia 14. Similarly, of all the Celto-Roman peoples, France stands out by the size of its contribution, 150 suicides per million, while in the same period Italy had only about 30 and Spain still fewer. It is hard to agree with Morselli that so great a difference is explained by the greater number of Germanic elements in France than in the other Latin countries. Granted especially that the peoples thus distinguished among their kindred are also the most civilized, it is possible to assume that what differentiates societies and so-called ethnic groups is rather their unequal degree of civilization.

Among the Germanic peoples the variety is yet greater. Of the four groups associated with this stock, three of them are much less inclined to suicide than the Slavs and Latins. These are the Flemish, numbering only 50 suicides (per million), the Anglo-Saxons with only 70; as for the Scandinavians, Denmark, to be sure, has the high number of 268 suicides, but Norway has only 74.5 and Sweden only 84. So it is impossible to attribute the Danish suicide-rate to race, since it produces opposite effects in the two countries where this race is purest. In short, of all the Germanic peoples, only the Germans are in general strongly inclined to suicide. If then the terms were strictly used, it would be a question not of race but of nationality. Yet, since the existence of a German type in part, at least, hereditary, has not been disproved, the sense of the word may be stretched to the extreme extent of saying that suicide is more developed among the peoples of German race than among most Celto-Roman, Slavic or even Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian societies. But that is all that may be concluded from the above figures. In any case, this is the only instance where a certain influence of ethnic characteristics might possibly be suspected. Even here we shall find that in reality race plays no part.

To attribute the German inclination to suicide to this cause, it is not enough to prove that it is general in Germany; for this might be due to the special nature of German civilization. But the inclination would have to be shown to be connected with an hereditary state of the German organism, and that this is a permanent trait of the type, persisting even under change of social environment. Only thus could we regard it as a racial product. Let us see whether the German retains this sad primacy outside Germany, in the midst of the life of other peoples and acclimatized to different civilizations.

Austria offers us a complete laboratory for answering this question. In differing proportions in the various provinces, the Germans are mixed with a population of totally different ethnic origins. Let us see whether their presence effects an increase in the number of suicides. Table VII shows for each province the average suicide-rate for the quinquennium 1872-77 together with the numerical weight of the German elements. The races have been distinguished by their use of language; though this is not an absolutely exact standard, it is nevertheless the surest that can be employed.

TABLE VII—Comparison of Austrian Provinces with Respect to Suicide and Race

In this table, taken from Morselli himself, not the least trace of German influence can be seen. Bohemia, Moravia and Bukovina, containing only from 37 to 9 per cent of Germans, have a higher average of suicides (140) than Styria, Carinthia and Silesia (125), where the Germans are in the great majority. The latter provinces likewise, though containing an important Slav minority, in respect to suicide exceed the only three where the population is entirely German, Upper Austria, Salzburg and Transalpine Tyrol. To be sure, Lower Austria has many more suicides than the other regions; but its excess in this respect cannot be attributed to German elements, since Germans are more numerous in Upper Austria, Salzburg and Transalpine Tyrol where there are one-half or one-third as many suicides. The real reason for the high figure is that Lower Austria’s metropolis, Vienna, like all capitals has an enormous annual number of suicides; in 1876, 320 were committed per million inhabitants. The part played by the metropolis must not be attributed to race. Inversely, the small number of suicides of the Littoral, Carniola and Dalmatia is not due to the lack of Germans; for in Cisalpine Tyrol and in Galicia, where there are just as few Germans, there are from two to five times as many voluntary deaths. Even if the average suicide-rate for all eight provinces with German minorities is taken, we get the figure 86 or as much as in Transalpine Tyrol where there are only Germans, and more than in Carinthia and Styria, where they are very numerous. Thus, when the German and the Slav live in the same social environment, their tendency to suicide is approximately the same. Accordingly, the difference observed between them under other circumstances is not one of race.

It is the same with the difference noted between the German and the Latin. The two races are both found in Switzerland. Fifteen cantons are wholly or in part German. Their average of suicides is 186 (1876). Five have a French majority (Valais, Fribourg, Neufchâtel, Geneva, Vaud). Their average of suicides is 255. The canton where fewest are committed, Valais (10 per 1 million), is the very one containing most Germans (319 per 1,000 inhabitants); on the other hand, Neufchâtel, Geneva and Vaud where the population is almost wholly Latin have respectively 486, 321 and 371 suicides.

To show more clearly the influence of the ethnic factor, if there is one, we have sought to eliminate the religious factor by which it might be obscured. To accomplish this we have compared German and French cantons of the same confession. The results of this calculation only confirm those above:

Among Catholics there is no perceptible difference between the races; and among Protestants, the French have the greater number.

Facts thus concur in showing that Germans commit suicide more than other peoples not because of their blood but because of the civilization in which they are reared. However, one of Morselli’s proofs to establish the influence of race might at first glance seem more conclusive. The French people consists of a mixture of two principal races, the Celts and the Cymries, who from the beginning have been distinct from each other in regard to height. From the times of Julius Caesar the Cymries have been known for their great stature. Thus Broca was able to determine by the height of the inhabitants how these two races are distributed today over our territory, and he found populations of Celtic origin preponderant to the South of the Loire and those of Cymric origin to the North. This ethnographic map thus offers a certain similarity to that of suicide; for we know that suicides are concentrated largely in the northern part of the country and are, contrariwise, at their minimum in the Center and the Midi. But Morselli has gone further. He thought that he could prove the regular variation of French suicides according to the distribution of ethnic groups. To do so, he formed six groups of departments, calculated the average suicides for each, and also that of drafted soldiers exempted for insufficient height; which is an indirect way of measuring the average height of the corresponding population, because average height increases as the number of exempted men decreases. These two series of averages are found to vary inversely with one another; the fewer men exempted for insufficient height, that is, the greater the average height, the greater the number of suicides is found to be.

So exact a correspondence, if established, could scarcely be explained by anything but the action of race. But Morselli’s way of reaching this result forbids us to consider it final. As basis for his comparison, he took the six ethnic groups defined by Broca according to the assumed degree of purity of the two races, Celts or Cymries. Despite this scholar’s authority, these ethnographic questions are much too complex and still leave too much room for a variety of interpretations and contradictory hypotheses, for his proposed classification to be considered as certain. The number of more or less unverifiable historical conjectures with which he had to support it need only be considered for it to appear that though this research proves the presence in France of two clearly distinct anthropological types, the reality of the intermediate and variously shaded types which he believed he had discovered is much more doubtful. If we disregard this systematic but somewhat overingenious scheme, and merely classify the departments by the average stature characteristic of each (that is, by the average number of men exempted for insufficient height), and if we confront each of these averages with that of suicide, results, quite different from Morselli’s, are obtained. (See Table VIII, p. 91).

The suicide-rate does not increase in regular proportion to the relative importance of the real or supposed Cymric elements; for the first group with highest stature has fewer suicides than the second and scarcely more than the third. Likewise the last three groups are on approximately the same level, however unequal in respect to height. All that these figures show is that France is divided into two halves as regards both suicides and stature, one northern with numerous suicides and high stature, the other central with lower stature and fewer suicides, but that these two progressions are not exactly parallel. In other words, the two great regional masses found on the ethnographic map are also found on that of suicides; but the coincidence is only broadly and generally accurate. It does not appear in the detailed variations shown by the two subjects compared.

TABLE VIII

Once the coincidence has thus been reduced to its true proportions, it is no longer a decisive proof of the ethnic elements; for it is merely a curious fact inadequate to prove a law. It may well be a mere encounter of independent factors. The hypothesis attributing it to the action of race would at least require confirmation, even demonstration, by other facts. On the contrary, it is contradicted by the following facts:

1. It would be surprising if such a collective type as the Germans, incontestably real and with so strong an affinity for suicide, should cease to show this affinity at the first modification of social conditions, and if a somewhat problematic type like the Celts or the ancient Belgians, of whom only rare vestiges remain, should exert an effective influence on this same tendency. There is too great a difference between the extremely general characteristics which memorialize this type and the complex and special character of such a tendency.

2. We shall see below that suicide was common among the ancient Celts. Therefore, if it is rare today in populations of supposedly Celtic origin, it cannot be due to a congenital characteristic of the race but to changed external circumstances.

3. Celts and Cymries are not pure primitive races; they were related “by blood, language and beliefs.” Both are only varieties of the tall, blond race which gradually spread throughout Europe by mass invasions or successive thrusts. The only ethnographic difference between them is that the Celts became more differentiated from the common type through crossings with the smaller, darker races of the Midi. Thus, if the greater aptitude for suicide of the Cymries has ethnic causes, it is because in them the primitive race has changed less. In that case, however, suicide should be found to increase the more, even outside of France, the more the distinctive characteristics of this race have been unaltered. This is not so. The greatest statures in Europe (1.72 m.) are found in Norway and, besides, the type probably originates in the North, especially on the Baltic coast; it is supposed also to be best preserved there. Yet the suicide-rate has not risen in the Scandinavian peninsula. The same race is said to have preserved its purity better in Holland, Belgium and England than in France, and yet the last-named country shows many more suicides than the other three.

But this geographical distribution of French suicides may be explained without the necessity of introducing the obscure operations of race. Our country is known to be divided morally as well as ethnologically into two parts as yet not wholly combined. The peoples of the Center and the Midi have retained their own temperament, a characteristic way of life, and for this reason resist the ideas and manners of the North. Now the center of French civilization is in the North; it has remained essentially northern in character. Since, on the other hand, as will be seen later, this civilization contains the principal causes which lead Frenchmen to suicide, the geographical limits of its sphere of action are also those of the zone most fertile in suicides. Thus, if the people of the North commit suicide more than those of the Midi, it is not because they are more predisposed to it by their ethnic temperament, but simply that the social causes of suicide are more specially located north rather than south of the Loire.

As for the origin and persistence of this twofold moral character of our country, this is an historical question not adequately to be solved by ethnographic considerations. It is not, or at least not only, racial differences which may have been the cause of it; for very distinct races may blend and disappear in one another. There is no such antagonism between the northern and southern types that centuries of common life have not been able to overcome. The native of Lorraine was as different from the Norman as the Provencal from the inhabitant of Ile-de-France. But for historical reasons the provincial spirit and local traditionalism have remained much stronger in the Midi, while in the North the need of facing common enemies, a closer solidarity of interests and more frequent contacts have brought the peoples together and blended their history much sooner. And just this moral levelling, by increasing the circulation of persons, ideas and things has made the latter region the birthplace of an intense civilization.

III

The theory that sees race as an important factor in the inclination to suicide also implies that it is hereditary; for it can be an ethnic characteristic only on this condition. But has the heredity of suicide been proved? The question deserves close examination because of an interest of its own besides its relation to the one just considered. If indeed it were proved that the tendency to suicide is genetically transmitted, it would follow that it depends closely on a definite organic state.

But the meaning of the words must first be defined. When suicide is said to be hereditary, is it meant merely that the children of suicides by inheriting their parents’ disposition are inclined in like circumstances to behave like them? In this sense the proposition is incontestable but without bearing, for then it is not suicide which is hereditary; what is transmitted is simply a certain general temperament which, in a given case, may predispose persons to the act but without forcing them, and is therefore not a sufficient explanation of their determination. In fact, the individual constitution which favors its appearance most, namely neurasthenia in its various forms, has been seen to offer no reason for the variations shown by the suicide-rate. But psychologists have very often spoken of heredity in quite another sense. According to this, it is the tendency to self-destruction which passes directly and wholly from parents to children and which, once transmitted, gives birth wholly automatically to suicide. It would then be a sort of psychological mechanism, semi-autonomous, not very different from a monomania and probably corresponding to a no less definite physiological mechanism. Thus it would depend essentially on individual causes.

Does observation show the existence of such an heredity? Certainly, suicide sometimes reappears in a given family with terrible regularity. Gall cites one of the most striking examples: “A certain Mr. G—, a landowner, leaves seven children and a legacy of two millions; six remain in Paris or the neighborhood and retain their share of the father’s fortune; some even increase it. None have misfortunes; all enjoy good health…. All seven brothers committed suicide within forty years.” Esquirol knew a merchant, the father of six children, four of whom killed themselves; a fifth made repeated attempts. In other instances, parents, children and grandchildren yield successively to the same impulse. But the example of physiologists should teach us not to draw hasty conclusions in these questions of heredity which have to be treated very carefully. Thus, there are certainly many cases where tuberculosis attacks successive generations and yet scholars still hesitate to admit that it is hereditary. The opposite seems to be the prevalent conclusion. This repetition of a disease in the same family may indeed be due not to the hereditary character of tuberculosis itself but to that of a general temperament calculated to receive and on occasion propagate the bacillus causing the disease. Here what is transmitted is not the affliction itself but only a field such as to favor its development. To have the right to reject the last explanation peremptorily, one must at least have proven that the Koch bacillus is often found in the foetus; until this has been proved the solution is doubtful. Like caution is required in the problem before us. To solve it, therefore, it is not enough to cite certain facts favorable to the thesis of heredity. These facts must also be numerous enough not to be attributable to accidental circumstances—not to permit another explanation—to be contradicted by no other fact. Do they satisfy this triple condition?

To be sure, they are considered common. But to conclude that the nature of suicide is hereditary, their greater or less frequency is not enough. One must also be able to show their proportion relative to the total of voluntary deaths. If hereditary antecedents were shown for a relatively high fraction of the total number of suicides, it might be admitted that a relation of causality exists between the two facts, that suicide tends to be hereditarily transmissible. But lacking this proof it is always possible that the cases cited are due to chance combinations of various causes. Now the observations and comparisons which alone would solve this question have never been made on a large scale. Rarely is more than a certain number of interesting anecdotes adduced. Our slight information on this particular matter is in no sense conclusive; it is even somewhat contradictory. Among 39 insane cases with a more or less pronounced tendency to suicide observed by Dr. Luys in his hospital and on which he had collected fairly complete data, he found only a single case where the same tendency had already been found in the patient’s family. Of 265 insane, Brierre de Boismont found only II, or 4 per cent, whose parents had committed suicide. The proportion given by Cazauvieilh is much higher; he is said to have found hereditary antecedents in 13 patients out of 60, making 28 per cent. According to Bavarian statistics, the only ones recording hereditary influence, it has been found about 13 in 100 times from 1857-66.

Indecisive as these facts may be, if they could be accounted for only by admitting a special suicidal heredity, this hypothesis would receive a certain authority from the sheer impossibility of accounting for it otherwise. But there are at least two other causes which, especially in conjunction, may produce the same effect.

First, almost all these observations were made by alienists and, consequently, among the insane. Of all diseases, insanity is perhaps the one most commonly transmitted. One may therefore question whether what is hereditary is the tendency to suicide rather than the insanity of which it is a frequent but nevertheless accidental symptom. Doubt is the more justified because according to all observers it is especially, if not exclusively, among insane suicides that cases favorable to the heredity-hypothesis occur. Even under such conditions, doubtless, heredity plays an important role; but it is no longer the heredity of suicide. What is transmitted is the general mental affliction, the nervous weakness of which suicide is a contingent result, though one always to be apprehended. In this case heredity has nothing more to do with the tendency to suicide than with hemoptysis in cases of hereditary tuberculosis. If the unfortunate, with both insane persons and suicides in his family, kills himself, it is not because his parents had done the same but because they were insane. Thus, as mental sickness alters in transmission, as for example the melancholy of the progenitors becomes the chronic delirium or instinctive madness of the descendants, several members of the same family may kill themselves and all these suicides resulting from different sorts of insanity may consequently be of different types.

This primary cause, however, is not enough to explain all the facts. For it is not also proved, on the one hand, that suicide never repeats itself except among families of the insane; and on the other, the remarkable fact remains that in some of these families suicide seems to be in an endemic state, although insanity does not necessarily imply such a result. Not every insane person is impelled to self-destruction. How does it happen, then, that there are families of insane apparently predestined to it? The abundance of such cases evidently pre-supposes another factor than the one just mentioned, but which may be accounted for without attributing it to heredity. The contagious power of example is enough to cause it.

In fact, we shall see in one of the following chapters that suicide is very contagious. This contagiousness is specially common among individuals constitutionally very accessible to suggestion in general and especially to ideas of suicide; they are inclined to reproduce not only all that impresses them but, above all, to repeat an act toward which they have already some inclination. This twofold condition is found among insane or merely neurasthenic persons whose parents have committed suicide. For their nervous weakness makes them susceptible to hypnosis and simultaneously predisposes them to ready reception of the idea of self-destruction. It is not astonishing then that the memory or sight of the tragic end of their kinfolk becomes for them the source of an obsession or irresistible impulse.

Not only is this explanation as satisfactory as that of heredity, but it alone can interpret certain facts. In families where repeated suicides occur, they are often performed almost identically. They take place not only at the same age but even in the same way. In one case hanging is preferred, in another asphyxiation or falling from a high place. In a case often quoted, the resemblance is yet greater; the same weapon served a whole family at intervals of several years. One more proof of heredity has been seen in these resemblances. Yet, if there are good reasons for not regarding suicide as a distinct psychological entity, how much more difficult to admit the existence of a tendency to suicide by hanging or shooting! Do not these facts rather show the great contagious influence of suicides, already recorded in their family history, on the minds of the survivors? For they must be besieged and persecuted by these memories to be persuaded to repeat the act of their predecessors so faithfully.

This explanation is made yet more probable by numerous cases of the same character where heredity is not in question and where contagion is the only source of the evil. In the epidemics to be mentioned again below, different suicides almost always resemble one another to an astonishing degree. They seem copies of one another. There is the well-known story of the fifteen patients who hung themselves in swift succession in 1772 from the same hook in a dark passage of the hospital. Once the hook was removed there was an end of the epidemic. Likewise, at the camp of Boulogne, a soldier blew out his brains in a sentry-box; in a few days others imitated him in the same place; but as soon as this was burned, the contagion stopped. All these facts show the overpowering influence of obsession, because they cease with the disappearance of the material object which evoked the idea. Thus, when suicides, obviously springing from one another, all seem to follow the same model, they may fairly be attributed to the same cause, the more so because the latter must have maximum effect in families where everything combines to augment its power.

Furthermore, many persons feel that by imitating their parents they yield to the prestige of example. Such was the case of a family observed by Esquirol: “The youngest (brother) of between 26 and 27 years became melancholy and threw himself from the roof of his house; a second who was caring for him reproached himself with the death, made several attempts at suicide, and died a year later from prolonged and repeated self-starvation…. A fourth brother, a doctor, killed himself. Two years before, he had told me with terrifying despair that he would not escape his fate.” Moreau cites the following: an insane person whose brother and paternal uncle had committed suicide was influenced by the suicidal tendency. A brother who visited him at Charenton was appalled by the horrible thoughts he brought away and could not resist the conviction that he, too, would finally succumb. A patient made the following confession to Brierre de Boismont: “Until the age of 53 I had good health; I had no troubles; my temperament was quite cheerful when, three years ago, I began to have gloomy thoughts…. For the past three months they have persecuted me constantly and I am tempted to kill myself at every moment. I will not conceal that my brother committed suicide at the age of 60; I had never thought seriously of it, but on reaching my fifty-sixth year the memory recurred to me more vividly and now it never leaves me.” But one of the most conclusive facts is reported by Falret. A young girl of 19 learned that “an uncle on the father’s side had intentionally killed himself. The news affected her greatly: she had heard it said that insanity was hereditary, and the thought that some day she might lapse into this sad condition soon obsessed her…. When she was in this sad state her father killed himself. From that time she felt herself absolutely destined to violent death. She had no other thought than the impending end and repeated incessantly: ‘I must perish like my father and my uncle! Thus is my blood tainted!’ She made an attempt. Now the man whom she thought her father was not really so. To free her from her fears her mother confessed the truth and obtained an interview for her with her real father. The great physical resemblance caused the patient’s doubts to disappear instantly. She at once gave up all idea of suicide; her cheerfulness steadily returned and she recovered her health.”

Thus, on one hand, the cases most favorable to the heredity of suicide do not suffice to prove its existence, and on the other, they readily admit of a different explanation. But in addition, certain statistical facts, the importance of which psychologists seem to have missed, are inconsistent with the hypothesis of hereditary transmission properly so-called. They are as follows:

1. If there is an organic-psychic determinism of hereditary origin which predestines people to suicide it must have approximately equal effect upon both sexes. For as suicide by itself is in no sense sexual, there is no reason why inheritance should afflict men rather than women. Now, actually, the suicides of females are known to be very few, only a slight fraction of those of males. This would not be so if heredity had the influence attributed to it.

Shall we say that women inherit the tendency to suicide as much as men, but that it is usually offset by the social conditions peculiar to the female sex? What then shall one think of an heredity which remains latent in most cases, except that it is a vague potentiality of a wholly unproven reality?

2. Speaking of the heredity of tuberculosis, M. Grancher writes as follows: “We may recognize heredity in such a case (one of pronounced tuberculosis in a three-month old child) ; we are fully justified in doing so…. It is much less certain that tuberculosis dates from the intra-uterine period when it appears fifteen or twenty months after birth, when nothing could suggest the existence of latent tuberculosis…. What shall we say of tuberculosis appearing fifteen, twenty or thirty years after birth? Even supposing that a lesion existed at the beginning of life, would it not have lost its virulence after so long a time? Is it natural to accuse these fossil microbes rather than decidedly living bacilli of all the evil … to which the person is exposed in the course of his life?” In fact, lacking the peremptory proof of being shown the germ in the foetus or the newborn child, the right to declare an affection hereditary at least requires proof that it often occurs among young children. This is why heredity has been called the basic cause of the special madness appearing in earliest infancy and known for this reason as hereditary insanity. Koch has even shown that where insanity is influenced by heredity, though not completely its result, it has a much greater tendency to precocity than where it has no known antecedents.

Characteristics are cited, to be sure, which are considered hereditary and which, nevertheless, appear only at a more or less advanced age: the beard, horns of animals, etc. But this delay is explicable under the hypothesis of heredity only if they depend on an organic state itself capable of development only through the evolution of the individual; for example, heredity can evidently produce no demonstrable effects relating to the sexual functions until puberty. But if the transmitted characteristic is possible at any age, it should appear at once. Thus, the longer it takes in appearing, the more clearly must heredity be considered only a weak stimulus to its existence. It is not clear why the tendency to suicide should share one phase of organic development rather than another. If it constitutes a definite mechanism, capable of being transmitted fully organized, it should become active during the very first years.

But the opposite actually takes place. Suicide is extremely rare among children. From 1861-75 according to Legoyt, there were in France per million children under 16 years of age 4.3 suicides by boys, 1.8 suicides by girls. According to Morselli, the figures are lower in Italy: they are not above 1.25 for the former and 0.33 for the latter sex (period from 1866-75), and the proportion is essentially the same in all countries. The earliest suicides are committed at five years and are wholly exceptional. But no proof exists that these extraordinary facts must be attributed to heredity. It must be remembered that the child too is influenced by social causes which may drive him to suicide. Even in this case their influence appears in the variations of child-suicide according to social environment. They are most numerous in large cities. Nowhere else does social life commence so early for the child, as is shown by the precocity of the little city-dweller. Introduced earlier and more completely than others to the current of civilization, he undergoes its effects more completely and earlier. This also causes the number of child-suicides to grow with pitiful regularity in civilized lands.

But in addition, not only is suicide very rare during childhood but it reaches its height only in old age, and during the interval grows steadily from age to age.

TABLE IX*—Suicides at Different Ages (per million of each age)

With some shades of difference these relations are the same in all countries. Sweden is the only society in which the maximum comes between 40 and 50 years. Everywhere else, it occurs only in the last or next to the last period of life and, everywhere alike, with very slight exceptions due perhaps to errors of tabulation, the increase to this extreme limit is continuous. The decrease observable beyond 80 years is not absolutely general and in any case is very slight. The contingent of this age is somewhat below that of the septuagenarians, but is above the others or, at least, most of them. How therefore can one attribute to heredity a tendency appearing only in the adult and which, from that period on, continues to increase with the advance of age? How consider an affliction congenital which, non-existent or very weak during childhood, develops constantly and reaches its maximum intensity only among the aged?

The law of homochronous heredity cannot be invoked for the species. It practically states that under certain circumstances the inherited characteristic appears among the descendants at approximately the same age as among the parents. This is not true of suicide, which, beyond 10 or 15 years, is common to all ages. Its character is not to appear at a definite moment in life but to progress steadily from age to age. This constant progression shows that its cause itself develops as a man grows older. Heredity does not fulfill this condition; for by definition heredity is what it is and what it may be immediately on full fecundation. Does the suicidal tendency then exist latently from birth, but appear only under the influence of other forces which emerge late and develop progressively? This would indeed reduce hereditary influence at most to a very general, vague predisposition; for, if it requires the aid of another factor so much that its action is felt only with and in proportion to the occurrence of this factor, the latter must be regarded as the true cause.

In short, the variation of suicide with age shows that no organicpsychic state can possibly be its determining cause. For everything organic, being subject to the vital rhythm, successively experiences phases of growth, stoppage and, finally, regression. No biological or psychological characteristic progresses indefinitely; all, having reached a moment of climax, become decadent. Suicide, on the contrary, achieves its culminating point only at the final limits of human existence. Even the decrease often observed at about 80 years of age is not only slight and not absolutely general, but only relative, since nonagenarians commit suicide as much or more than sexagenarians and, especially, more than men in full maturity. Does not this prove that the cause of the variations of suicide cannot be a congenital and invariable impulse, but the progressive action of social life? Just as suicide appears more or less early depending on the age at which men enter into society, it grows to the extent that they are more completely involved in it.

We are thus referred back to the conclusion of the preceding chapter. Doubtless, suicide is impossible if the individual’s constitution is opposed to it. But the individual state most favorable to it is not a definite and automatic tendency (except in the case of the insane), but a general, vague aptitude, which may assume various forms according to circumstances, permitting but not necessarily implying suicide and therefore giving no explanation for it.

Notably Wagner, Gesetzmāssigkeit, etc., p. 165 ff. ; Morselli, p. 158; Oettingen, Moralstatistik, p. 760.

L’espèce humaine, p. 28. Paris, Felix Alcan.

Article, Anthropologie, in Dechambre’s Dictionnaire, vol. V.

We shall not mention the classifications proposed by Wagner and Oettingen; Morselli himself has criticized them decisively, (p. 160)

To explain these facts Morselli assumes, with no proof, that there are numerous Celtic elements in England and invokes the influence of climate for the Flemish.

Morselli, op. cit., p. 189.

Mémoires d’ anthropologie, vol. I, p. 320.

The existence of two great regional masses seems indisputable, one consisting of 15 northern departments in which tall stature predominates (only 39 exempt among a thousand drafted men), the other of 24 central and western departments where short stature is common (from 98 to 130 exemptions per thousand). Is this difference a result of race? This is a much more difficult question. Considering that the average stature in France has perceptibly changed within thirty years, that the number of exempt for this reason has dropped from 92.80 per thousand in 1831 to 59.40 in 1860, we have reason to doubt whether so changeable a characteristic is a very sure criterion for proving the existence of these relatively stable types called races. But, in any case, the constitution of the intermediate groups interposed between the two extreme types by Broca, their denomination and association with either the Cymric or the other stock, appears to leave place for even more doubt. Morphological reasons are impossible here. Anthropology may indeed determine the average stature in a given region, but not the crossings from which this average results. Now these intermediate statures may quite as well be due to crossings of the Celts with men of greater stature as to alliances of the Cymries with smaller men than themselves. Nor may geographical distribution be considered, for these mixed groups occur very sporadically, in the North-West (Normandy and the Lower Loire), the South-West (Aquitaine), the South (the Roman Province), in the East (Lorraine), etc. Historical arguments then remain which can only be very conjectural. Little is known historically as to how, when, and in what conditions and proportions the various invasions and infiltrations of peoples took place. Still less can history help to determine their influence on the organic constitution of these peoples.

Especially if the Seine is disregarded, which, because of the exceptional conditions there, is not exactly comparable with the other departments.

See below, Bk. II, Chap. 4.

Broca, op. cit., vol. I, p. 394.

See Topinard, Anthropologie, p. 464.

The same remark applies to Italy. There, too, suicides are more numerous in the North than in the South, and, on the other hand, the average height of the people of the North is slightly greater than that of the South. But present-day Italian civilization is Piedmontese in origin and, on the other hand, the Piedmontese are slightly taller than the people of the South. The difference, however, is slight. The maximum found in Tuscany and Venetia is 1.65 m., the minimum, in Calabria, is 1.60, at least for continental Italy. In Sardinia height diminishes to 1.58 m.

Sur les functions du cerveau, Paris, 1825.

Maladies mentales, vol. I, p. 582.

Suicide, p. 197.

Quoted by Legoyt, p. 242.

Suicide, pp. 17-19.

See Morselli, p. 410.

Brierre de Boismont, op. cit., p. 59; Cazauvieilh, op. cit., p. 19.

Ribot,L’hérédité, p. 145. Paris, Felix Alcan.

Lisle, op. cit., p. 195.

Brierre, op. cit., p. 57.

Luys, op. cit., p. 201.

Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences méd., art. Phtisie, vol. LXXVI, p. 542.

Op. cit., pp. 170-172.

See Morselli, p. 329 ff.

See Legoyt, p. 158 ff. Paris, Felix Alcan.

For men only one case, that of Italy, is known to us where a stationary phase occurs between 30 and 40 years. For women there is a moment of pause at the same age, which is general and must therefore be real. It marks a stage in female life. As it is peculiar to the unmarried, it probably corresponds to the intermediate period when disappointments and frustrations caused by celibacy begin to be less felt, and when the moral isolation felt by the unmarried woman when alone in the world at a more advanced age does not yet produce all its effects.