CHAPTER 4 ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE

IN THE order of existence, no good is measureless. A biological quality can only fulfill the purposes it is meant to serve on condition that it does not transgress certain limits. So with social phenomena. If, as we have just seen, excessive individuation leads to suicide, insufficient individuation has the same effects. When man has become detached from society, he encounters less resistance to suicide in himself, and he does so likewise when social integration is too strong.

I

It has sometimes been said that suicide was unknown among lower societies. Thus expressed, the assertion is inexact. To be sure, egoistic suicide, constituted as has just been shown, seems not to be frequent there. But another form exists among them in an endemic state.

Bartholin, in his book, De Causis contemptae mortis a Danis, reports that Danish warriors considered it a disgrace to die in bed of old age or sickness, and killed themselves to escape this ignominy. The Goths likewise believed that those who die a natural death are destined to languish forever in caverns full of venomous creatures. On the frontier of the Visigoths’ territory was a high pinnacle called The Rock of the Forefathers, from the top of which old men would throw themselves when weary of life. The same custom was found among the Thracians, the Heruli, etc. Silvius Italicus says of the Spanish Celts: “They are a nation lavish of their blood and eager to face death. As soon as the Celt has passed the age of mature strength, he endures the flight of time impatiently and scorns to await old age; the term of his existence depends upon himself.” Accordingly they assigned a delightful abode to those who committed suicide and a horrible subterranean one to those who died of sickness or decrepitude. The same custom has long been maintained in India. Perhaps this favorable attitude toward suicide did not appear in the Vedas, but it was certainly very ancient. Plutarch says concerning the suicide of the brahmin Calanus: “He sacrificed himself with his own hands as was customary with sages of this country.” And Quintus Curtius: “Among them exists a sort of wild and bestial men to whom they give the name of sages. The anticipation of the time of death is a glory in their eyes, and they have themselves burned alive as soon as age or sickness begins to trouble them. According to them, death, passively awaited, is a dishonor to life; thus no honors are rendered those bodies which old age has destroyed. Fire would be contaminated did it not receive the human sacrifice still breathing.” Similar facts are recorded at Fiji, in the New Hebrides, Manga, etc. At Ceos, men who had outlived a certain age used to unite in a solemn festival where with heads crowned with flowers they joyfully drank the hemlock. Like practices were found among the Troglodytes and the Seri, who were nevertheless renowned for their morality.

Besides the old men, women are often required among the same peoples to kill themselves on their husbands’ death. This barbarous practice is so ingrained in Hindu customs that the efforts of the English are futile against it. In 1817, 706 widows killed themselves in the one province of Bengal and in 1821, 2,366 were found in all India. Moreover, when a prince or chief dies, his followers are forced not to survive him. Such was the case in Gaul. The funerals of chiefs, Henri Martin declares, were bloody hecatombs where their garments, weapons, horses and favorite slaves were solemnly burned, together with the personal followers who had not died in the chief’s last battle. Such a follower was never to survive his chief. Among the Ashantis, on the king’s death his officers must die. Observers have found the same custom in Hawaii.

Suicide, accordingly, is surely very common among primitive peoples. But it displays peculiar characteristics. All the facts above reported fall into one of the following three categories:

1. Suicides of men on the threshold of old age or stricken with sickness.

2. Suicides of women on their husbands’ death.

3. Suicides of followers or servants on the death of their chiefs.

Now, when a person kills himself, in all these cases, it is not because he assumes the right to do so but, on the contrary, because it is his duty. If he fails in this obligation, he is dishonored and also punished, usually, by religious sanctions. Of course, when we hear of aged men killing themselves we are tempted at first to believe that the cause is weariness or the sufferings common to age. But if these suicides really had no other source, if the individual made away with himself merely to be rid of an unendurable existence, he would not be required to do so; one is never obliged to take advantage of a privilege. Now, we have seen that if such a person insists on living he loses public respect; in one case the usual funeral honors are denied, in another a life of horror is supposed to await him beyond the grave. The weight of society is thus brought to bear on him to lead him to destroy himself. To be sure, society intervenes in egoistic suicide, as well; but its intervention differs in the two cases. In one case, it speaks the sentence of death; in the other it forbids the choice of death. In the case of egoistic suicide it suggests or counsels at most; in the other case it compels and is the author of conditions and circumstances making this obligation coercive.

This sacrifice then is imposed by society for social ends. If the follower must not survive his chief or the servant his prince, this is because so strict an interdependence between followers and chiefs, officers and king, is involved in the constitution of the society that any thought of separation is out of the question. The destiny of one must be that of the others. Subjects as well as clothing and armor must follow their master wherever he goes, even beyond the tomb; if another possibility were to be admitted social subordination would be inadequate. Such is the relation of the woman to her husband. As for the aged, if they are not allowed to await death, it is probably, at least in many instances, for religious reasons. The protecting spirit of a family is supposed to reside in its chief. It is further thought that a god inhabiting the body of another shares in his life, enduring the same phases of health and sickness and aging with him. Age cannot therefore reduce the strength of one without the other being similarly weakened and consequently without the group existence being threatened, since a strengthless divinity would be its only remaining protector. For this reason, in the common interest, a father is required not to await the furthest limit of life before transferring to his successors the precious trust that is in his keeping.

This description sufficiently defines the cause of these suicides. For society to be able thus to compel some of its members to kill themselves, the individual personality can have little value. For as soon as the latter begins to form, the right to existence is the first conceded it; or is at least suspended only in such unusual circumstances as war. But there can be only one cause for this feeble individuation itself. For the individual to occupy so little place in collective life he must be almost completely absorbed in the group and the latter, accordingly, very highly integrated. For the parts to have so little life of their own, the whole must indeed be a compact, continuous mass. And we have shown elsewhere that such massive cohesion is indeed that of societies where the above practices obtain. As they consist of few elements, everyone leads the same life; everything is common to all, ideas, feelings, occupations. Also, because of the small size of the group it is close to everyone and loses no one from sight; consequently collective supervision is constant, extending to everything, and thus more readily prevents divergences. The individual thus has no way to set up an environment of his own in the shelter of which he may develop his own nature and form a physiognomy that is his exclusively. To all intents and purposes indistinct from his companions, he is only an inseparable part of the whole without personal value. His person has so little value that attacks upon it by individuals receive only relatively weak restraint. It is thus natural for him to be yet less protected against collective necessities and that society should not hesitate, for the very slightest reason, to bid him end a life it values so little.

We thus confront a type of suicide differing by incisive qualities from the preceding one. Whereas the latter is due to excessive individuation, the former is caused by too rudimentary individuation. One occurs because society allows the individual to escape it, being insufficiently aggregated in some parts or even in the whole; the other, because society holds him in too strict tutelage. Having given the name of egoism to the state of the ego living its own life and obeying itself alone, that of altruism adequately expresses the opposite state, where the ego is not its own property, where it is blended with something not itself, where the goal of conduct is exterior to itself, that is, in one of the groups in which it participates. So we call the suicide caused by intense altruism altruistic suicide. But since it is also characteristically performed as a duty, the terminology adopted should express this fact. So we will call such a type obligatory altruistic suicide.

The combination of these two adjectives is required to define it; for not every altruistic suicide is necessarily obligatory. Some are not so expressly imposed by society, having a more optional character. In other words, altruistic suicide is a species with several varieties. We have just established one; let us examine the others.

In these same societies just mentioned, or others of their sort, suicides may often be encountered with the most futile immediate and apparent motives. Titus Livy, Caesar, Valerius Maximus all tell us not without astonishment mixed with admiration, of the calmness with which the Gallic and German barbarians kill themselves. Celts were known who bound themselves to suffer death in consideration of wine or money. Others boasted of retreating neither before fire nor the ocean. Modern travellers have noticed such practices in many lower societies. In Polynesia, a slight offense often decides a man to commit suicide. It is the same among the North American Indians; a conjugal quarrel or jealous impulse suffices to cause a man or woman to commit suicide. Among the Dacotas and Creeks the least disappointment often leads to desperate steps. The readiness of the Japanese to disembowel themselves for the slightest reason is well known. A strange sort of duel is even reported there, in which the effort is not to attack one another but to excel in dexterity in opening one’s own stomach. Similar facts are recorded in China, Cochin China, Thibet and the Kingdom of Siam.

In all such cases, a man kills himself without being explicitly forced to do so. Yet these suicides are of the same nature as obligatory suicide. Though public opinion does not formally require them, it is certainly favorable to them. Since here not clinging to life is a virtue, even of the highest rank, the man who renounces life on least provocation of circumstances or through simple vainglory is praiseworthy. A social prestige thus attaches to suicide, which receives encouragement from this fact, and the refusal of this reward has effects similar to actual punishment, although to a lesser degree. What is done in one case to escape the stigma of insult is done in the other to win esteem. When people are accustomed to set no value on life from childhood on, and to despise those who value it excessively, they inevitably renounce it on the least pretext. So valueless a sacrifice is easily assumed. Like obligatory suicide, therefore, these practices are associated with the most fundamental moral characteristics of lower societies. As they can only persist if the individual has no interests of his own, he must be trained to renunciation and an unquestioned abnegation; whence come such partially spontaneous suicides. Exactly like those more explicitly prescribed by society, they arise from this state of impersonality, or as we have called it, altruism, which may be regarded as a moral characteristic of primitive man. Therefore, we shall give them, also, the name altruistic, and if optional is added to make their special quality clearer, this word simply means that they are less expressly required by society than when strictly obligatory. Indeed, the two varieties are so closely related that it is impossible to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.

Finally, other cases exist in which altruism leads more directly and more violently to suicide. In the preceding examples, it caused a man to kill himself only with the concurrence of circumstances. Either death had to be imposed by society as a duty, or some question of honor was involved, or at least some disagreeable occurrence had to lower the value of life in the victim’s eyes. But it even happens that the individual kills himself purely for the joy of sacrifice, because, even with no particular reason, renunciation in itself is considered praiseworthy.

India is the classic soil for this sort of suicide. The Hindu was already inclined to self-destruction under Brahminic influence. Manu’s laws, to be sure, command suicide only with some reservations. A man must already have attained a certain age, he must at least have left one son. But if these conditions are satisfied, he has nothing more to do with life. “The Brahmin who has freed himself from his body by one of the methods employed by the great saints, freed from grief and fear, is honorably received in the abode of Brahma.” Though Buddhism has often been accused of having carried this principle to its most extreme consequences and elevated suicide into a religious practice, it actually condemned it. It is true that it taught that the highest bliss was self-destruction in Nirvana; but this suspension of existence may and should be achieved even during this life without need of violent measures for its realization. Of course, the thought that one should seek to escape existence is so thoroughly in the spirit of the Hindu doctrine and so conformable with the aspirations of the Hindu temperament that it may be encountered in various forms in the chief sects sprung from Buddhism or formed simultaneously with it. It is thus with Jainism. Though one of the canonical books of the Jainist religion reproves suicide, accusing it of really augmenting life, inscriptions found in many sanctuaries show that especially among the southern Jainists religious suicide was very often practiced. The believer allowed himself to die of hunger. In Hinduism the custom of seeking death in the waters of the Ganges or of other sacred rivers was widespread. Inscriptions represent to us kings and ministers preparing to end their days thus and we are assured that these superstitions had not wholly disappeared at the beginning of the century. Among the Bhils there was a rock from the top of which men cast themselves with religious motives, to devote themselves to Shiva; even as late as 1822 an officer attended one of these sacrifices. The story of the fanatics who let themselves be crushed to death in throngs under the wheels of the idol Juggernaut has become classic. Charlevoix in his time had observed rites of this sort in Japan: “Nothing is commoner,” he says, “than to see ships along the seashore filled with these fanatics who throw themselves into the water weighted with stones, or sink their ships and let themselves be gradually submerged while singing their idol’s praises. Many of the spectators follow them with their eyes, lauding their valor to the skies and asking their blessing before they disappear. The sectarians of Amida have themselves immured in caverns where there is barely space to be seated and where they can breathe only through an air shaft. There they quietly allow themselves to die of hunger. Others climb to the top of very high cliffs, upon which there are sulphur mines from which flames jet from time to time. They continuously call upon their gods, pray to them to accept the sacrifice of their lives and ask that some of these flames rise. As soon as one appears they regard it as a sign of the gods’ consent and cast themselves head-foremost to the bottom of the abyss…. The memory of these so-called martyrs is held in great reverence.”

There are no suicides with a more definitely altruistic character. We actually see the individual in all these cases seek to strip himself of his personal being in order to be engulfed in something which he regards as his true essence. The name he gives it is unimportant; he feels that he exists in it and in it alone, and strives so violently to blend himself with it in order to have being. He must therefore consider that he has no life of his own. Impersonality is here carried to its highest pitch; altruism is acute. But, it will be objected, do not these suicides occur simply because men consider life unhappy? Obviously, if an individual kills himself so spontaneously, he does not set much store by his life, which is consequently conceived as more or less melancholy. But in this respect all suicides are alike. Yet it would be a great mistake to make no distinction between them; for this conception has not always the same cause and thus is not identical in the different cases, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. While the egoist is unhappy because he sees nothing real in the world but the individual, the intemperate altruist’s sadness, on the contrary, springs from the individual’s seeming wholly unreal to him. One is detached from life because, seeing no goal to which he may attach himself, he feels himself useless and purposeless; the other because he has a goal but one outside this life, which henceforth seems merely an obstacle to him. Thus, the difference of the causes reappears in their effects, and the melancholy of one is quite different from that of the other. That of the former consists of a feeling of incurable weariness and sad depression; it expresses a complete relaxation of activity, which, unable to find useful employment, collapses. That of the latter, on the contrary, springs from hope; for it depends on the belief in beautiful perspectives beyond this life. It even implies enthusiasm and the spur of a faith eagerly seeking satisfaction, affirming itself by acts of extreme energy.

Furthermore, the more or less gloomy view of life taken by a people does not in itself explain the intensity of its inclination to suicide. The Christian conceives of his abode on earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial; he also thinks that his true country is not of this world. Yet the aversion to suicide professed and inspired by Christianity is well known. The reason is that Christian societies accord the individual a more important role than earlier ones. They assign to him personal duties which he is forbidden to evade; only as he has acquitted himself of the role incumbent upon him here on earth is he admitted or not admitted to the joys of the hereafter, and these very joys are as personal as the works which make them his heritage. Thus the moderate individualism in the spirit of Christianity prevents it from favoring suicide, despite its theories concerning man and his destiny.

The metaphysical and religious systems which form logical settings for these moral practices give final proof that this is their origin and meaning. It has long been observed that they coexist generally with pantheistic beliefs. To be sure, Jainism, as well as Buddhism, is atheistic; but pantheism is not necessarily theistic. Its essential quality is the idea that what reality there is in the individual is foreign to his nature, that the soul which animates him is not his own, and that consequently he has no personal existence. Now this dogma is fundamental to the doctrines of the Hindus; it already exists in Brahminism. Inversely, where the principle of being is not fused with such doctrines but is itself conceived in an individual form, that is, among monotheistic peoples like the Jews, Christians, Mahometans, or polytheists like the Greeks and the Latins, this form of suicide is unusual. It is never found there in the state of a ritual practice. There is therefore probably a relation between it and pantheism. What is this relation?

It cannot be conceded that pantheism produced suicide. Such abstract ideas do not guide men, and the course of history could not be explained through the play of purely metaphysical concepts. Among peoples as well as individuals, mental representations function above all as an expression of a reality not of their own making; they rather spring from it and, if they subsequently modify it, do so only to a limited extent. Religious conceptions are the products of the social environment, rather than its producers, and if they react, once formed, upon their own original causes, the reaction cannot be very profound. If the essence of pantheism, then, is a more or less radical denial of all individuality, such a religion could be constituted only in a society where the individual really counts for nothing, that is, is almost wholly lost in the group. For men can conceive of the world only in the image of the small social world in which they live. Religious pantheism is thus only a result and, as it were, a reflection of the pantheistic organization of society. Consequently, it is also in this society that we must seek the cause for this special suicide which everywhere appears in connection with pantheism.

We have thus constituted a second type of suicide, itself consisting of three varieties: obligatory altruistic suicide, optional altruistic suicide, and acute altruistic suicide, the perfect pattern of which is mystical suicide. In these different forms, it contrasts most strikingly with egoistic suicide. One is related to the crude morality which disregards everything relating solely to the individual; the other is closely associated with the refined ethics which sets human personality on so high a pedestal that it can no longer be subordinated to anything. Between the two there is, therefore, all the difference between primitive peoples and the most civilized nations.

However, if lower societies are the theatre par excellence of altruistic suicide, it is also found in more recent civilizations. Under this head may notably be classified the death of some of the Christian martyrs. All those neophytes who without killing themselves, voluntarily allowed their own slaughter, are really suicides. Though they did not kill themselves, they sought death with all their power and behaved so as to make it inevitable. To be suicide, the act from which death must necessarily result need only have been performed by the victim with full knowledge of the facts. Besides, the passionate enthusiasm with which the believers in the new religion faced final torture shows that at this moment they had completely discarded their personalities for the idea of which they had become the servants. Probably the epidemics of suicide which devastated the monasteries on several occasions during the Middle Ages, apparently caused by excesses of religious fervor, were of this nature.

In our contemporary societies, as individual personality becomes increasingly free from the collective personality, such suicides could not be widespread. Some may doubtless be said to have yielded to altruistic motives, such as soldiers who preferred death to the humiliation of defeat, like Commandant Beaurepaire and Admiral Villeneuve, or unhappy persons who kill themselves to prevent disgrace befalling their family. For when such persons renounce life, it is for something they love better than themselves. But they are isolated and exceptional cases. Yet even today there exists among us a special environment where altruistic suicide is chronic: namely, the army.

II

It is a general fact in all European countries that the suicidal aptitude of soldiers is much higher than that of the civilian population of the same age. The difference varies between 25 and 900 per cent (see Table XXIII).

TABLE XXIII—Comparison of Military and Civilian Suicides in the Chief European Countries

Denmark is the only country where the contingent of the two portions of the population is substantially the same, 388 per million civilians and 382 per million soldiers during the years 1845-56. But the suicides of officers are not included in this figure.

This fact is at first sight all the more surprising because it might be supposed that many causes would guard the army against suicide. First, from the physical point of view, the persons composing it represent the flower of the country. Carefully selected, they have no serious organic flaws. Also, the esprit de corps and the common life should have the prophylactic effect here which they have elsewhere. What is the cause of so large an aggravation?

Since soldiers who are not officers do not marry, the fault has been ascribed to bachelorhood. But first, this should have less adverse effects in the army than in civilian life; for, as we have just remarked, the soldier is anything but isolated. He belongs to a strongly constructed society of a sort calculated partially to replace the family. However true or false this hypothesis may be, there is a way to examine this factor in isolation. One needs only compare the suicides of soldiers with those of unmarried persons of the same age; Table XXI, the importance of which again becomes clear, allows this comparison. During the years 1888-91 in France, 380 suicides per million soldiers were recorded; at the same time, unmarried men of from 20 to 25 years showed only 237. There were thus 160 military suicides per 100 unmarried civilians; which makes a coefficient of aggravation of 1.6, wholly independent of bachelorhood.

If the suicides of non-commissioned officers are separately computed, the coefficient is still higher. During the period 1867-74, a million non-commissioned officers showed an annual average of 993 suicides. According to a census made in 1866, their average age was a little over 31 years. Of course, we do not know how high suicides of unmarried men of 30 years rose at that time; the tables we have drawn up refer to a much more recent time (1889-91) and are the only ones in existence; but starting from their figures, whatever error we make can only lower the coefficient of aggravation of the non-commissioned officers below what it really was. Actually, the number of suicides having almost doubled between the two periods, the rate of unmarried men of the age in question certainly rose. Consequently, comparing suicides of non-commissioned officers of 1867-74 with those of unmarried men of 1889-91, we may well reduce but not broaden the adverse effect of the military profession. If therefore we find a coefficient of aggravation in spite of this error, we may be sure not only that it is real but that it is quite a bit more important than the figures would make it appear. Now, in 1889-91, a million unmarried men of 31 years of age gave a number of suicides between 394 and 627, or about 510. This number is to 993 as 100 is to 194; which implies a coefficient of aggravation of 1.94 which may be increased almost to 4 without fear of exaggerating the facts.

Finally, the officers’ corps averaged from 1862 to 1878, 430 suicides per million persons. Their average age which cannot have varied between very wide extremes was in 1866, 37 years and 9 months. Since many of them are married, they should be compared not with unmarried men of this age but with the total of the male population, unmarried and married men combined. Now, at 37 years of age in 1863-68, a million men of every marital status gave only a little more than 200 suicides. This number is to 430 as 100 is to 215, making a coefficient of aggravation of 2.15, in no way dependent on marriage or family life.

This coefficient which varies with the different degrees of the hierarchy from 1.6 to nearly 4, can clearly be explained only by causes connected with the military status. To be sure, we have directly shown its existence only for France; for other countries we lack the data necessary to examine the influence of bachelorhood in isolation. But as the French army happens to be the very one least afflicted by suicide in Europe, with the one exception of Denmark, we may be sure of the general character of the above result and even that it must be much more pronounced in other European states. To what cause shall we attribute it?

Alcoholism has been suggested, which is said to afflict the army more than the civilian population. But if, in the first place, as has been shown, alcoholism has no definite influence on the suicide-rate in general, it is unlikely to have more on that of military suicides in particular. Then, the few years of service, three in France and two and a half in Prussia, could not create a large enough number of inveterate alcoholics for the enormous contingent contributed to suicide by the army to be thus explained. Finally, even according to those observers who attribute most influence to alcoholism, only a tenth of the cases can be ascribed to it. Thus, even though alcoholic suicides were two or three times as numerous among soldiers as among civilians of like age, which is not proven, a considerable excess of military suicides would still remain for which another cause would have to be sought.

The cause most often suggested is disgust with the service. This explanation agrees with the popular conception which attributes suicide to the hardships of life; for disciplinary rigor, lack of liberty, and want of every comfort makes barracks life appear especially intolerable. Actually it seems that there are many other harsher occupations which yet do not increase the inclination to suicide. The soldier is at least sure of having enough food and shelter. But whatever these considerations may be worth, the following facts show the inadequacy of this over-simple explanation:

1. It is logical to admit that disgust with the service must be much stronger during the first years and decrease as the soldier becomes accustomed to barracks life. After some time, an acclimatization must be made, either through habit or the desertion of the most refractory or their suicide; and this acclimatization must become greater the longer the stay with the colors. If, then, it were the change of habits and the impossibility of adjustment to the new life which developed in the soldier special aptitude for suicide, the coefficient of aggravation should lessen as the life under arms was prolonged. This is not so, as the following table shows:

In France, in less than 10 years of military service, the suicide-rate almost triples while for unmarried civilians during the same time it only rises from 237 to 394. In the English armies of India, it becomes eight times as high in 20 years; the civilian rate never advances so rapidly. This proves that the army’s characteristic aggravation is not centered in the first years.

The situation seems to be the same in Italy. To be sure, we have not the proportional figures for the soldiers of each contingent. But the net figures are practically the same for each of the three service years, 15.1 for the first, 14.8 for the second, 14.3 for the third. It is true that the numbers diminish year by year as a result of deaths, discharges, leaves of absence, etc. The absolute figures could thus only remain at the same level if the proportional figures have considerably increased. It is not unlikely, however, that in some countries there are a certain number of suicides at the beginning of service really due to the change of life. In fact, in Prussia it is said that suicides are unusually numerous during the first six months. Likewise in Austria, of 1,000 suicides, 156 occur in the first three months, which is certainly a very considerable figure. But these facts do not conflict with the preceding ones. For very possibly, besides the temporary aggravation occurring during this troubled period, there is another due to totally different causes which increases according to the same pattern we have observed in France and England. Furthermore, in France itself, the rate of the second and third years is slightly less than that of the first, which, however, does not prevent the later increase.

2. Military life is much less hard and discipline less severe for officers and non-commissioned officers than for private soldiers. The coefficient of aggravation of the first two categories should therefore be less than that of the third. The opposite is true: we have already shown it for France; the same fact is encountered in other countries. In Italy, officers during the years 1871-75 showed an annual average of 565 cases per million while the troops had only 230 (Morselli). For the non-commissioned officers the rate is still more enormous, more than 1,000 per million. In Prussia, while privates show only 560 suicides per million, non-commissioned officers show 1,140. In Austria there is one suicide of an officer for every nine of privates, while there are clearly many more than nine privates to an officer. Likewise, although there is not a non-commissioned officer for every two soldiers, there is one suicide of the former for every 2.5 of the latter.

3. Disgust with the military life should be less among those who choose it freely as a vocation. Volunteers and re-enlisted men should therefore show less aptitude for suicide. On the contrary, it is exceptionally high.

For the reasons given, these coefficients, calculated with reference to unmarried men of 1889-91, are certainly below the correct numbers. The intensity of inclination shown by re-enlisted men is especially noteworthy, since they remain in the army after having experienced military life.

Thus the members of the army most stricken by suicide are also those who are most inclined to this career, who are best suited to its needs and are best sheltered from its disadvantages and inconveniences. The coefficient of aggravation special to this profession is then caused not by the repugnance it inspires, but, on the contrary, by the sum total of states, acquired habits or natural dispositions making up the military spirit. Now, the first quality of a soldier is a sort of impersonality not to be found anywhere in civilian life to the same degree. He must be trained to set little value upon himself, since he must be prepared to sacrifice himself upon being ordered to do so. Even aside from such exceptional circumstances, in peace time and in the regular exercise of his profession, discipline requires him to obey without question and sometimes even without understanding. For this an intellectual abnegation hardly consistent with individualism is required. He must have but a weak tie binding him to his individuality, to obey external impulsion so docilely. In short, a soldier’s principle of action is external to himself; which is the quality of the state of altruism. Of all elements constituting our modern societies, the army, indeed, most recalls the structure of lower societies. It, too, consists of a massive, compact group providing a rigid setting for the individual and preventing any independent movement. Therefore, since this moral constitution is the natural field for altruistic suicide, military suicide may certainly be supposed to have the same character and derive from the same source.

This would explain the increase of the coefficient of aggravation with the duration of service; this aptitude for renunciation, this taste for impersonality develops as a result of prolonged discipline. Just as the military spirit must be stronger among re-enlisted men and non-commissioned officers than among mere privates, the former may be expected to be more specially inclined to suicide than the latter. This hypothesis even permits an understanding of the strange superiority of non-commissioned officers over officers in this respect. If they commit suicide more frequently, it is because no function requires so much of the habit of passive submission. However disciplined the officer, he must be capable of initiative to a certain extent; he has a wider field of action and, accordingly, a more developed individuality. The conditions favorable to altruistic suicide are thus less completely realized in him than in the non-commissioned officer; having a keener feeling of the value of his life, he is less ready to sacrifice it.

Not only does this explanation account for the facts stated above, but it is furthermore confirmed by the following facts.

I. From Table XXIII it appears that the military coefficient of aggravation is higher the less tendency the civilian population has to suicide and vice versa. Denmark is the classical country for suicide; soldiers kill themselves there no more than the other inhabitants. Next to Denmark, the states most abounding in suicides are Saxony, Prussia and France; in them the army is not especially stricken, the coefficient of aggravation varying between 1.25 and 1.77. On the contrary it is very considerable for Austria, Italy, the United States and England, countries in which civilian suicide is infrequent. Rosenfeld, in the article already cited, reached the same results, having classified the principal European countries from the point of view of military suicide though without thinking of drawing any theoretical conclusion from this classification. Here is the order in which he arranges the different states and the coefficients calculated by him:

Except that Austria should come before Italy, the inversion is absolutely regular.

It is still more strikingly clear within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The army corps with the highest coefficient of aggravation are those stationed in garrisons in regions where civilians have the highest immunity, and vice versa:

There is only one exception, the territory of Innsbruck, where the civilian rate is low and the coefficient of aggravation only average.

In Italy, likewise, Bologna is the military district where suicides of soldiers are least frequent (180 suicides per 1,000,000); and also where civilian suicides are highest (89.5). The Apulias and the Abruzzis, on the contrary, have many military suicides (370 and 400 per million.) and only 15 or 16 civilian suicides. Similar facts may be observed in France. The military government of Paris with 260 suicides per million is well below the army corps of Brittany with 440. The coefficient of aggravation in Paris must really be insignificant, since in the Seine a million unmarried men of from 20 to 25 years show 214 suicides.

These facts prove that the causes of military suicide are not only different from, but in inverse proportion to, the most determining causes of civilian suicide. The latter causes in the great European societies spring from the excessive individuation characteristic of civilization. Military suicides must therefore depend on the reverse disposition, feeble individuation or what we have called the state of altruism. Actually, those peoples among whom the army is most inclined to suicide are also the least advanced, those whose customs most resemble the customs observed in lower societies. Traditionalism, the chief opponent of the spirit of individualism, is far more developed in Italy, Austria and even in England than in Saxony, Prussia and France. It is more intense in Zara, in Cracow, than in Graz or Vienna, in the Apulias than in Rome or Bologna, in Brittany than in the Seine. As it guards against egoistic suicide, one readily understands that where it still has power, the civilian population has few suicides. But it has this prophylactic influence only if it remains moderate. If it exceeds a certain degree of intensity, it becomes itself an original cause of suicide. As we know, the army necessarily tends to exaggerate this, and is the readier to do so the more its own action is aided and re-enforced by the surrounding environment. The effects of army education are more violent the more it conforms with the ideas and sentiments of the civilian population itself; for then, this education is not restrained at all. Where, on the other hand, the military spirit is steadily and strongly opposed by public morality, it cannot be as strong as where everything conspires to incline the young soldier in the same direction. It is thus readily understandable that, in countries where there is sufficient altruism to protect the population as a whole to a degree, it is easily carried by the army to a point where it becomes the cause of a considerable aggravation.

2. In all armies, the coefficient of aggravation is highest among the elite troops.

The last figure, having been calculated in proportion to unmarried men of 1889-91, is far too low and yet is far higher than that of ordinary troops. Similarly, in the army of Algeria, considered the school of military virtue, during the period 1872-78 suicide had a mortality double that of the same period for troops stationed in France (570 suicides per million instead of 280). On the other hand, the least severely affected troops are the bridge-train, the engineers, the ambulance corps, troops of administrative units, in short, those with the least pronounced military character. In Italy, similarly, while the army as a whole during the years 1878-81 provided only 430 cases per million, the bersaglieri had 580, the carabinieri 800, the military school and instruction battalions 1,010.

Now, what distinguishes elite troops is the intense strength of the spirit of abnegation and military renunciation among them. Suicide in the army accordingly varies with this moral state.

3. A final proof of this law is that military suicide is everywhere decreasing. In France, there were in 1862, 630 cases per million; in 1890 there are only 280. It has been claimed that this decrease was due to the laws reducing the length of service. But this tendency to decrease is much anterior to the new recruiting law. It is continuous from 1862 on, except for a fairly considerable rise from 1882 to 1888. Besides, it appears everywhere. Military suicides have fallen in Prussia from 716 per million in 1877 to 457 in 1893; in all Germany from 707 in 1877 to 550 in 1890; in Belgium from 391 in 1885 to 185 in 1891; in Italy from 431 in 1876 to 389 in 1892. In Austria and England the fall is unimportant, but there is no rise (1,209 in 1892 in the first country and 210 in the second in 1890, instead of 1,277 and 217 in 1876).

This is the way things should happen if our explanation is well founded. It is certain, indeed, that a decline in the old military spirit has occurred in all these countries at the same time. Wrongly or rightly, the habits of passive obedience, of absolute submission, of impersonalism (if this barbarism is permitted us), have proved to be more and more in contradiction with the requirements of the public conscience. Consequently, they have lost ground. To satisfy new aspirations, discipline has become less rigid, less repressive of the individual. It is also noteworthy that at the very same time in these same societies civilian suicides have constantly increased. This is a new proof that their generating cause is of an opposite nature to that usually responsible for the specific aptitude of soldiers.

Everything therefore proves that military suicide is only a form of altruistic suicide. We certainly do not mean that all individual cases occurring in the regiments are of this character and origin. When he puts on his uniform, the soldier does not become a completely new man; the effects of his education and of his previous life do not disappear as if by magic; and he is also not so separated from the rest of society as not to share in the common life. The suicide he commits may therefore sometimes be civilian in its character and causes. But with the exception of these scattered cases, showing no connections with one another, a compact, homogeneous group remains, including most suicides which occur in the army and which depend on this state of altruism without which military spirit is inconceivable. This is the suicide of lower societies, in survival among us because military morality itself is in certain aspects a survival of primitive morality. Influenced by this predisposition, the soldier kills himself at the least disappointment, for the most futile reasons, for a refusal of leave, a reprimand, an unjust punishment, a delay in promotion, a question of honor, a flush of momentary jealousy or even simply because other suicides have occurred before his eyes or to his knowledge. Such is really the source of these phenomena of contagion often observed in armies, specimens of which we have mentioned earlier. They are inexplicable if suicide depends essentially on individual causes. It cannot be chance which caused the appearance in precisely this regiment or that locality of so many persons predisposed to self-homicide by their organic constitution. It is still more inadmissible that such a spread of imitative action could take place utterly without predisposition. But everything is readily explained when it is recognized that the profession of a soldier develops a moral constitution powerfully predisposing man to make away with himself. For this constitution naturally occurs, in varying degrees, among most of those who live or who have lived under the colors, and as this is an eminently favorable soil for suicides, little is needed to actualize the tendency to self-destruction which it contains; an example is enough. So it spreads like a trail of gunpowder among persons thus prepared to follow it.

III

It may now be better understood why we insisted on giving an objective definition of suicide and on sticking to it.

Because altruistic suicide, though showing the familiar suicidal traits, resembles especially in its most vivid manifestations some categories of action which we are used to honoring with our respect and even admiration, people have often refused to consider it as self-destruction. It is to be remembered that the deaths of Cato and of the Girondins were not suicides for Esquirol and Falret. But if suicides with the spirit of renunciation and abnegation as their immediate and visible cause do not deserve the name, it can be no more appropriate for those springing from the same moral disposition, though less apparently; for the second differ by only a few shades from the first. If the inhabitant of the Canary Islands who throws himself into an abyss to do honor to his god is not a suicide, how give this name to a Jain sectary who kills himself to obtain entry to oblivion; to the primitive who, under the influence of the same mental state, renounces life for a slight insult done him or merely to express his contempt for existence; to the bankrupt who prefers not to survive his disgrace; and finally to the many soldiers who every year increase the numbers of voluntary deaths? All these cases have for their root the same state of altruism which is equally the cause of what might be called heroic suicide. Shall they alone be placed among the ranks of suicides and only those excluded whose motive is particularly pure? But first, according to what standard will the division be made? When does a motive cease to be sufficiently praiseworthy for the act it determines to be called suicide? Moreover, by separating these two classes of facts radically from each other, we inevitably misjudge their nature: For the essential characteristics of the type are clearest in obligatory altruistic suicide. Other varieties are only derivative forms. Either a considerable number of instructive phenomena will be eliminated or, if not all are eliminated, not only will a purely arbitrary choice be the only one possible among them, but it will be impossible to detect the common stock to which those that are retained belong. Such is the risk we incur in making the definition of suicide depend on the subjective feelings it inspires.

Besides, not even the reasons for the sentiment thought to justify this exclusion are well founded. The fact is stressed that the motives of certain altruistic suicides reappear in slightly different forms as the basis of actions regarded by everyone as moral. But is egoistic suicide any different? Has not the sentiment of individual autonomy its own morality as well as the opposite sentiment? If the latter serves as foundation to a kind of courage, strengthening and even hardening the heart, the other softens and moves it to pity. Where altruistic suicide is prevalent, man is always ready to give his life; however, at the same time, he sets no more value on chat of another. On the contrary, when he rates individual personality above all other ends, he respects it in others. His cult for it makes him suffer from all that minimizes it even among his fellows. A broader sympathy for human suffering succeeds the fanatical devotions of primitive times. Every sort of suicide is then merely the exaggerated or deflected form of a virtue. In that case, however, the way they affect the moral conscience does not sufficiently differentiate them to justify their being separated into different types.

Bibliography.—Steinmetz, Suicide Among Primitive Peoples, in American Anthropologist, January 1894.—Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvoelker, passim.—Suicides dans les Armées, in Journal de la société de statistique, 1874, p. 250.—Millar, Statistic of military suicide, in Journal of the Statistical Society, London, June 1874.—Mesnier, Du suicide dans l’Armée, Paris 1881.—Bournet, Criminalité en France et en Italie, p. 83 ff.—Roth, Die Selbstmorde in der K. u. K. Armee, in den Jahren 1873-80, in Statistische Monatschrift, 1892.—Rosenfeld, Die Selbstmorde in der Preussischen Armee, in Militarwochenblatt, 1894, 3. supplement.—By the same, Der Selbstmord in der K. u. K. oesterreichischen Heere, in Deutsche Worte, 1893.—Anthony, Suicide dans l’armée allemande, in Arch. de med. et de phar. militaire, Paris, 1895.

Oettingen, Moralstatistik, p. 762.

Quoted from Brierre de Boismont, p. 23.

Punica, I, 225 and ff.

Life of Alexander, CXIII.

VIII, 9.

Cf. Wyatt Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 163.

Frazer, Golden Bough, vol. I, p. 216 and ff.

Strabo, par. 486.—Elian, V. H., 337.

Diodorus Sicilus, III, 33, pars. 5 and 6.

11 Pomponius Mela, III, 7.

Histoire de France, I, 81, cf. Caesar, de Bello Gallico, VI, 19.

See Spencer, Sociology, vol. II, p. 146.

See Jarves, History of the Sandwich Islands, 1843, p. 108.

At the foundation of these practices there is probably also the desire to prevent the spirit of the dead man from returning to earth to revisit the objects and persons closely associated with him. But this very desire implies that servants and followers are strictly subordinated to their master, inseparable from him, and, furthermore, that to avoid the disaster of the spirit’s remaining on earth they must sacrifice themselves in the common interest.

See Frazer, Golden Bough, loc. cit., and passim.

See Division du travail social, passim.

Caesar, Gallic War, VI, 14.—Valerius Maximus, VI, 11 and 12.—Pliny, Natural History, IV, 12.

Posidonius, XXIII, in Athanasius Deipnosophistes, IV, 154.

Elian, XII, 23.

Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvoelker, vol. VI, p. 115.

Ibid., vol. III, Part I, p. 102.

Mary Eastman, Dacotah, pp. 89, 169.—Lombroso, L’Uomo delinquente, 1884, p. 51.

Lisle, op. cit., p. 333.

Lois de Manu, VI, 32 (trans. Loiseleur).

Barth, The Religions of India, London, 1891, p. 146.

Bühler, Über die Indische Secte der Jaïna, Vienna, 1887, pp. 10, 19, and 37.

Barth, op. cit., p. 279.

Heber, Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India, 1824-25, Chap. XII.

Forsyth, The Highlands of Central India, London, 1871, pp. 172-175.

Cf. Burnell, Glossary, 1886, under the word, Jagarnnath. The practice has almost disappeared; but single cases have been observed even in our days. See Stirling, Asiatic Studies, vol. XV, p. 324.

Histoire du Japon, vol. II.

The moral state occasioning these suicides has been called acedia. See Bourquelot, Recherches sur les opinions et la législation en matière de mort volontaire pendant le moyen âge.

Probably the frequent suicides of the men of the Revolution were at least partly due to an altruistic state of mind. At this time of civil strife and collective enthusiasm, individual personality had lost some of its value. The interests of country or party outweighed everything. Doubtless the great number of capital executions spring from the same cause. One then killed others as readily as one’s self.

The figures on military suicide are taken from official documents or from Wagner (op. cit., p. 229 and ff.) ; those on civilian suicide from official documents, Wagner’s statements, or Morselli. For the United States we have assumed that the average army age was from 20 to 30 years as in Europe.

A new proof of the non-efficacy of the organic factor in general and of matrimonial selection in particular.

During the years 1867-74 the suicide-rate is about 140; in 1889-91 it is 210 to 220, an increase of nearly 60 per cent. If the rate of unmarried men grew in the same proportion, and there is no reason why it should not have done so, during the first of these periods it would have been only 319, which would raise the coefficient of aggravation of non-commissioned officers to 3.11. If we do not speak of non-commissioned officers after 1874, it is because from then on there were decreasingly few professional non-commissioned officers.

See Roth’s article in the Stat. Monatschrift, 1892, p. 200.

For Prussia and Austria, we have not the numbers of men per year of service, which prevents our computing the proportional numbers. In France, it was said that if military suicides had diminished following the war, it was because the service had become shorter (5 years instead of 7). But this decrease did not last and from 1882 the figures rose perceptibly. From 1882 to 1889 they returned to their number before the war, varying between 322 and 424 per million, although the length of service had again been reduced, 3 years in place of 5.

t may be questioned whether the great size of the military coefficient of aggravation in Austria does not result from a more exact recording of military suicides than those of the civilian population.

It is notable that the state of altruism is inherent in a region. The army corps of Brittany is not exclusively composed of Bretons, but it undergoes the influence of the moral atmosphere of its environment.

This rise is too important to be accidental. If we note its occurrence at the very commencement of the period of colonial expansion, we may justly wonder whether the wars the period occasioned did not cause a reawakening of the military spirit.

We do not mean that individuals suffered from this repression and killed themselves because they suffered. They killed themselves in greater numbers because they were less individualized.

Which does not mean that it is destined to disappear forthwith. These survivals have their own bases for existence, and it is natural for some of the past to remain in the midst of the present. Life is made of these contradictions.