SUICIDE.
(To THM EDITOR OF TEGI " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—In your article, last week, on Dr. O'Dea's work on the above subject, you express your surprise that Switzerland should stand so high in the list of those countries where this crime is prevalent. I must acknowledge that this undesirable pre- eminence does not strike me as in any way surprising.
I suppose that in this crime, more than in any other, the only adequate preventative is the realisation, on the part of the man tempted, of a responsibility to some higher Power, that can affect his welfare, not in this life only, but after death; and that therefore the religious convictions of a people will be one of the principal elements in calculating the probability of suicide being common, or the reverse, in any given country. Where faith is strong and responsibility for every crime is the most vivid, there we should expect fewer of these crimes, than in countries where faith is weak and responsibility almost unthought of.
Now, Switzerland is the most Calvinistic country in the world, and the leading doctrine of Calvinism teaches people the abominable doctrine that whatever their conduct, it cannot in any way affect their salvation or damnation. When, there- fore, they are overcome with troubles in which others only resist the temptation to suicide by their strong conviction that their conduct will be judged hereafter, naturally those holding a Calvinistic creed will be more liable to give way.
From other crimes men may be, and doubtless are, withheld by the fear of the law ; but in this, since when a man attempts suicide he always thinks he shall succeed, and having succeeded will be beyond the power of the law, nothing can withhold the miserable, except a true conception of their moral responsibility. Again, this same " responsibility " will explain the low num- ber of such crimes in countries like Portugal and Ireland, for there, notwithstanding that there is probably much greater misery, the Catholic Church never allows the people to forget their responsibility to God; and believing, as they do, that their eternity depeuds on their condition at death, they naturally shrink from a crime which leaves no time for repentance.
I think we may, therefore, differ from Dr. O'Dea when he says that "the ratio of suicide to population, the world over, is chiefly governed by political and industrial causes," and shall be nearer the truth if we say that it depends a great deal more on the vividness of men's conviction of .a hereafter, dependent on their conduct here.— I am, Sir, Lim, 21 Brunswick Gardens, Kensington. S. WYNELL-MAYOW.
[A. number of the Cantons are Catholic, and among the Protestant Cantons we are not aware that ultra-Calvinism is now at all a prevalent belief.—En. Spe.ctator.]
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