224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Protestant inhabitants of the same country. Where the tendency to 

 suicide is great among the latter, it will be found to be also high 

 among the former, as may be observed from the statistics already 

 quoted of Baden, Wiirtemberg, Franconia, Galicia, Bavaria, etc. 

 This follows from the moral and social condition of the various re- 

 ligionists being rendered locally identical. Wagner, Oettingen, and 

 Legoyt reckon that they have established, from their study of the 

 influence of religion on this matter, that " the inclination toward sui- 

 cide in the inhabitants belonging to ting particular worship, in any 

 given country, will diminish in direct ratio with their numerical infe- 

 riority" According to Legoyt, suicide more rarely occurs in those 

 persuasions which are numerically weak, because the struggle with the 

 hostility and intolerance of the population in the midst of whom they 

 live exercises on them a sort of moral coercion, making them desirous 

 to avoid the harsh judgment held over them. As a matter of theory 

 we can not deny the truth of this conclusion of Legoyt, as we well 

 know how the spirit of association and the earnestness of religious 

 convictions increase in proportion to the isolation into which any given 

 congregation is cast when in the minority in a country. This influence 

 of the surrounding atmosphere on religion is proved by the persistence 

 and tenacity of the transmission of the Mosaic law through so many 

 ages and migrations, and may explain the small tendency toward sui- 

 cide among Jews. But at the same time an attentive examination 

 of facts does not altogether bear out Legoyt's conclusion ; for we find 

 that it is scarcely ever that minorities furnish the smallest contingent 

 to the register of suicide. For example, in Lower Bavaria, where 

 Protestants are barely y^ of the population, we find one hundred and 

 forty-eight suicides in a million among them, whereas among Catholics, 

 who compose nine tenths of the population, the number of suicides 

 amounts to hardly twenty-eight in a million. In Brandenburg, where 

 the Catholics are scarcely yf of the population, they show a threefold 

 greater inclination for suicide than in Saxony, where they form half 

 the population. And in Austria the Catholics, although in a minority 

 in Galicia, Buckowina, the Military Frontiers, and Transylvania, yet 

 show a greater tendency to suicide than either Greeks, Uniates, or 

 .bws. The exceptions to the rule, therefore, are more numerous than 

 the examples which should establish it. So far from it, if we consider 

 the aggregate of the various countries of Europe, and that at the latest 

 statistical period, it is easy to perceive that, where religious toleration 

 has made more way, minorities begin to approximate the general aver- 

 age of their religion, the moral coercion of which Legoyt speaks is fast 

 disappearing, and the unmixed influence of religion begins to tell with 

 full force. The same thing happens with the Protestants of Baden, 

 Wtlrtemberg, and Austria, and in fact everywhere ; notwithstanding 

 that they form the minority, and in some cases a very considerable 

 minority, the average of suicide is everywhere higher than that of the 



