CATHOLICISM, PROTESTANTISM, AND SUICIDE. 223 



correct to regard it as the consequence of the mode of life and habits 

 of the Hebrew people, who are always to be found living in crowded 

 cities (excepting, perhaps, the numerous Jewish population of Galicia, 

 Poland, and Buckowina) ; and the professions they follow are more 

 liable than others to commercial crises and the constant vicissitudes of 

 trade. 



With regard to suicide, on the other hand, the Jews of various 

 countries differ more among themselves than Catholics from Protest- 

 ants, who maintain a certain relative proportion with little variation. 

 Great anthropological and social diversities are indeed to be observed 

 between the Jews of Poland, Galicia, and Russia of the Dnieper, 

 where they are very numerous and exercise an important influence on 

 public affairs, and those of Central Europe, and in general of Catholic 

 or mixed Catholic countries, where they have had to struggle through 

 so many centuries against religious intolerance. 



The very high average of suicides among Protestants is another 

 fact too general to escape being ascribed to the influence of religion. 

 Protestantism, denying all materialism in external worship and en- 

 couraging free inquiry into dogmas and creeds, is an eminently mystic 

 religion, tending to develop the reflective powers of the mind and to 

 exaggerate the inward struggles of tbe conscience. This exercise of 

 the thinking organs, which, when they are weak by nature, is always 

 damaging, renders them yet more sensible and susceptible of morbid 

 impressions. Protestantism in the German states further exercises 

 this exciting influence on the cerebral functions in yet another man- 

 ner : it originated those philosophical systems which are based on the 

 naturalistic conception of human existence, and put forward the view 

 that the life of the individual is but a simple function of a great 

 whole. These philosophical ideas are harmless enough to strong minds 

 and those stored with a fit provision of scientific culture, but in the 

 democratic atmosphere of our times the heart is not educated pari 

 2mssic. The religious apathy with which the present generation is 

 afflicted does not arise from a reasoned inquiry into the laws of nature 

 or a scientific appreciation of its phenomena ; it is not, in short, a deep 

 conviction of the mind, but springs from a physical inertia, and from 

 the little hoid obtained by any ideas but such as are directed to mate- 

 rial improvement and the gratification of ambition. To our mind, 

 therefore, the great number of suicides is to be attributed to the state 

 of compromise which the human mind occupies at the present time 

 between the metaphysical and the positivist phase of civilization, and 

 as this transition is more active in countries of marked mystic and 

 metaphysical tendencies, such as is the case with Protestantism, it is 

 natural that in them suicide should have the greatest number of 

 victims. 



It is obvious that a great difference generally exists between Cath- 

 olic and Protestant countries only, not between the Catholic and 



