SYMPATHY IN SUICIDE.
CERTAINLY this is an age in which the imagination plays greater tricks with the sentiments of man than any of which we have ever read. That men should seek sympathy in worship, sympathy in the agitation for their just rights, sympathy in benevolence, sympathy in all generous undertakings, sympathy in works of pity, sympathy even in suffering, and sympathy under terror, seems natural enough, That we should desire to have others adding their stream of energy to our own where the object is either to relieve the pangs of misery or to soften the bitterness of fear, we can understand. That which unmans us in solitude, often rather stimulates us in society. That is the great secret of dis- cipline, as well as of conspiracy for dangerous revolt. But that our American cousins should have even conceived the possibility of craving sympathy for suicide, whether the story telegraphed on Monday from New York of a society for encouraging suicide be true in its details or not, is almost as singular as if they had conceived the idea of establishing a misanthropic society for encouraging mutual hatred. One cannot easily imagine a quainter subject for the exercise of sympathy than that of stimulating each other to forego sympathy altogether ; for we may fairly assume, we suppose, that no one who believes in either God or immortality could deliberately form the purpose of defying him by refusing to bear the pangs which he inflicts, or rushing into new and un- known and possibly even much more painful relations with our fellow-creatures out of which it may be impossible again to escape. It is only those who hold firmly that death ends all, who can well prefer it to a state of suffering which might chance to be doubled or multiplied indefinitely, if it should turn out that death does not end all, but only begins new and more durable forms of suffering. But to those who do firmly believe that death ends all (a belief which must be due rather to the torpor or lack of imagination than to its vivacity), there is something very strange in calling upon the magic of sympathy for its aid in putting a final end to the opportunity of sympathy. We could almost as easily imagine a special Society for pro- moting misanthropy. Let us avail ourselves of the craving for love to produce hate' is hardly a less reasonable ex- hortation than Let us avail ourselves of the craving for society to stimulate ns to put off all social ties, and plunge
naked into nothingness.' Yet unless the story be wholly a fabrication, which was telegraphed on Monday from New York, the Suicide Club must really have been either founded, or at all events imagined, for the very purpose of helping people to abjure club life, nay all associated life, altogether. We could much more easily conceive people either fleeing into solitude, that they might learn to love society, or joining a society that they might learn to love solitude,—both of which, courses of conduct might be in a sense perfectly rational, and indeed effectual,—than stimulating themselves by the enjoyment of sympathy to put a final term to the possi- bility of sympathy. The more comfortable you make your. self by the fire, the more keenly you dread the cold. The cooler the shade you can find in summer heats, the more you dread the burning sun. But a Suicide Society, if indeed such a society exists, proposes by the contagion of sympathy to nerve you to the leap into a renunciation of all possible intercourse with your fellow-men for ever. That hardly seems a very reasonable procedure.
We could, of course, understand the state of mind which made it easier for one who had lived upon the love of any particular friend to commit suicide when that friend had taken the leap first. But that would not need a society. Even Coleridge, who was, as we had supposed, a sincere Christian, says in his letters that but for his • children, he would not hesitate to put an end to his pains by a Roman death, which of course means suicide ; and in him this would only have been consistent with a belief that God has really left ns free to put off life at our own discretion, and to refuse to bear any longer the suffering which his Providence had inflicted,—which seems to us very like a disbelief in any specific Providence over death. But however difficult it may be to reconcile that view with Christ's teaching that the very hairs of our heads are numbered, and that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God's will, there is no difficulty at all in understanding how the chief object of life may be so closely wrapped up with the cultivation of some one or more affec- tions, that when they are no longer at work, the natural end of life seems attained. But nothing can be less like the mad inspiration of this kind of despair than a Suicide Club which deliberately invites dependence on a general stock of sympathy to help you in stripping off all sympathy. We suppose that the idea of such a club must be something of this kind There is a generally diffused idea that suicide is cowardly and unholy. This idea throws discredit on those who contem- plate it, and commit it. So let us in our last momenta seek the shelter of sympathy with the few who do not take this view. Perhaps that may give us strength to commit it, by diminish. ing that sense of complete alienation from our brother-men which would otherwise make us shiver on the brink, and fear to launch away.' That is an intelligible state of mind as far as it goes. But we wonder that men and women who are so sensitive to the general disapprobation of others, do not fear that by allowing themselves to form closer ties with those who agree with them, they may not increase their own reluctance to dissolve these ties when, but for having formed them, they would have been ready to die. And further, what we cannot at all understand is the necessity which seems to be conceived as of the very essence of the Club for fixing a date at which some one member of it shall take the plunge unless he would incur the contempt of its other members• Surely the logic of such a Club, if such a Club there is, should be to dissipate the atmosphere of disapprobation which surrounds suicide, but not to insist on suicide as a positive duty. How can it be a duty if the excuse,—or, if they prefer to call it so, the justification of it,—is the intolerable pain of living P Supposing the effect of associating with those who do not think suicide wrong is to make it more tolerable to live, why should they insist on acting as if it were all the more of a duty to die P There is something peculiarly illogical in trying by the help of one and the same Society to help each other to die more easily,—if they find life unendurable,— and yet to insist on setting the example of death, even if they find life quite endurable. Is it because life has become endurable that they seek to make it unendurable again by agreeing to forfeit each others' respect if they do not abandon it ? If so, that is admitting that there is some higher duty than mere personal caprice in the matter of life and death. And to those who think thus, we suspect that the higher duty will appear to be that of enduring bravely the pangs
they encounter, than of inviting and enduring new pangs which they need not encounter at all Suicide cannot be con- ceived as a positive duty without giving up the conception of life which makes self-will its great law. And if that con- ception is once given up, we feel no doubt that it will be given up in deference to a divine will, and not in deference to a capricious human organisation. We cannot understand a club for enforcing, or attempting to enforce, suicide, though we could understand a club for assailing and undermining the condemnation of it whenever the anguish of life seemed to be too great for any endurable kind of life. But, fortunately for man, the idea that our lives are really held at our own capricious will and pleasure, is so steadily contradicted by the conscience, that those who try to encourage suicide without appealing to any sense of duty in the matter, find themselves in a ridiculous position. They form a club of which the tendency should be to exculpate suicide. But considering that such a club might diminish sensibly the number of suicides, by relieving its members of any sense of social ostracism, they find themselves obliged to make a duty of what, on their own principles, they should only have defended as a privilege of the exceptionally miserable. In other words, they appeal to the logic of religion for the means of making an effective demonstration on the side of irreligion.
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