22o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nearly so prolific of great results, yet, on the other hand, the prospects 

 of the future were never more encouraging. We must not, indeed, 

 shut our eyes to the possibility of failure : the temptation to military 

 ambition ; the tendency to over-interference by the state ; the spirit 

 of anarchy and socialism these and other elements of danger may 

 mar the fair prospects of the future. That they will succeed, however, 

 in doing so, I can not believe. I can not but feel confident hope that 

 fifty years hence, when perhaps the city of York may renew its hospi- 

 table invitation, my successor in this chair more competent, I trust, 

 that I have been to do justice to so grand a theme will have to record 

 a series of discoveries even more unexpected and more brilliant than 

 those which I have, I fear so imperfectly, attempted to bring before 

 you this evening. For one great lesson which science teaches is, how 

 little we yet know, and how much we have still to learn. 



-*->- 



CATHOLICISM, PEQTESTANTISM, AND SUICIDE * 



By HENEY MOESELLI, M. D. 



THE influences of religion are, together with the influence of race, 

 the strongest motive powers which act on the will of man. 

 The discussion as to whether the growth of suicide is to be accounted 

 for by the decrease of religious sentiment scarcely finds place in a 

 work like this. It is a thesis generally put forward by moralists 

 whose opinion approaches our own on this subject. On the other 

 hand, the theme of the special influence of the various faiths, which 

 statisticians have sought to dispute, presents itself to us, two kinds of 

 proof being deduced therefrom. The first is furnished by the indica- 

 tion of the form of worship to which suicides belong ; but, unfortu- 

 nately, this is represented in very few statistics of Central Europe, 

 and is not always adapted to each case in particular. The second is 

 the approximate relation between the number of violent deaths and 

 the predominant form of worship in given countries ; and here the 

 most fertile in results are the statistics of the states having inhabitants 

 of various forms of worship, as Prussia, Germany, Austria, Holland, 

 and Switzerland. The countries of the south, Italy, Spain, and France, 

 have so small a number of non-Catholics that little or no comparative 

 result could be obtained from it. We notice again that, in the com- 

 parisons based on the religion of suicides, Judaism figures, in which 

 the influence of religious bonds is complicated with that of race. This 

 is perhaps the only religion bound up in the fate of a single people, 

 whether on account of the exclusiveness of the Mosaic laws, or be- 



* From advance sheets of Dr. Morselli's new book on suicide. As the tables can 

 not be here well given , the references to them are omitted. 



