The run of suicides not only continues, but seems to
in- crease. An evening paper of Thursday, for instance, reported six suicides and four attempts at suicide as the latest additions to the series. No doubt there is something contagious about suicide which infects all those who, being already in a morbid state of mind, read about it ; and doubtless the recent- great heats tended to produce this hysteric state of mind on which a ghastly example takes effect. What shows especially the morbidness is the indifference betrayed as to the mode of death, as regards its physical repulsiveness. One man, for instance, died in groat agony from drinking carbolic acid. A lad threw himself down before a railway-train. -A woman hanged herself to a stair-rail. We do not suppose ti heat produces directly this indifference to pain, but it appears to produce the kind of depression which makes examples of this kind exert an unnatural fascination. Still, to causes of this kind must be added, as a still more important condition of the epidemic, that loss of faith in Providence which makes men assume that their life is at their own disposal, and not a trust to be administered or a talent to be put out to usury. Add to this that there is a sentimental disposition abroad in the world to lavish a great deal of pity on those who make the most noise over their sufferings, and that there is an unaccountable longing in many weak people to be the object of this sort of compassion, and we have something like an explanation of the epidemic from which English society seems to be now suffering. If the newspapers would only be less lachrymose, would but stop shedding literary tears over these events, and ignore them wherever there was nothing which the help of man could mend, they would do a good deal towards arresting the epidemic. There is nothing glorious in giving up a struggle.
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