i88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wrongly or unwisely, we have not the right to declare them all 

 insane. It is true that many persons brood over their troubles 

 until everything loses proportion, their minds become unbalanced, 

 and in such a state they kill themselves. In such cases the act 

 may be correctly attributed to insanity. But what are we to say 

 of those who are to all appearance rational and yet are the victims 

 of sudden or growing impulses ? Such people are not voluntary 

 agents, and yet they can not be called insane. They are abnormal. 

 There is a fatal defect in their organization which is incompatible 

 with their survival under natural conditions. This defect may 

 give rise to sudden impulses or may cause a growing gradual 

 propensity which terminate in the final tragedy. Instantaneous 

 impulses are often brought about by the slightest circumstances. 

 Thus, gazing steadily at the wheels of an approaching train or 

 looking down from some great height may produce a delirium, a 

 distention of the blood-vessels of the brain, that instantly para- 

 lyzes the will of the victim. 



In the consideration of those propensities which are of gradual 

 growth we are confronted with an extremely difficult problem. 

 We know that a great many of those who ultimately destroy 

 themselves fight for years against the impulse. How are we to 

 account in such cases for the persistence of the tendency toward 

 suicide, which seems to be a part of their nature, a part which 

 draws them instinctively to death just as the normal creature is 

 drawn to a desire to live ? For such cases heredity may be in a 

 great measure responsible. It is clear that hereditary influences 

 may reveal their force in the suicidal impulses as in many other 

 of the problems of life. 



Whole families have been known to kill themselves. There 

 are a great many human beings who by nature are predisposed 

 to self-destruction, and only wait through life for a calamity 

 sufficiently great to prompt them to the act. They are victims of 

 their own faulty organizations. 



Individual temperament may have a great deal to do with the 

 question of suicide. In America the population is largely com- 

 posed of the various European races, and although these are liv- 

 ing under the same conditions, each nationality retains its own 

 peculiar rate of suicide. Drink and crime are responsible for a 

 large proportion of the daily self-murders. Drunkenness, the 

 most active agent of degeneration known, is directly responsible 

 for those which occur during a period of nervous depression fol- 

 lowing a debauch. Among the criminal classes suicide is quite 

 common, but it is among the petty and not the grave offenders 

 that it occurs. Poverty and disease are also strong incentives to 

 self-destruction. Suicide is often regulated by the price of bread. 

 Life has few pleasures for the homeless and friendless. Death to 



