INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS 103 



inertia in the Japanese character, nevertheless, as 

 we all know, it did not in these latter days preclude 

 a very high degree of development of affectability 

 towards Western ideas, and susceptibility towards 

 intellectual stimuli from Europe. It is a warning 

 to us not to assume that mental inertia is the 

 characteristic only of the blockhead : it all depends 

 on the status quo that is maintained. 



National psychic inertia can be viewed under 

 other aspects still ; what is it that brings it about 

 that in London or Paris there is almost the same 

 number of suicides, misdirected letters, houses set 

 on fire or umbrellas left in trains every year ? As 

 to suicide, the constancy of the figures is very 

 striking . Morselli' s exhaustive treatise on ' ' Suicide ' ' * 

 demonstrates conclusively that the number of such 

 acts as voluntary death, so far from varying widely 

 from year to year in any given community, is 

 remarkably constant. He says : " The proportion 

 (of suicides) to the population is maintained regu- 

 larly in each particular country from year to year : " 

 in other words, there is a limit set. Further- 

 more, there are noticeable parallelisms between the 

 numbers of suic:des, homicides, marriages, legitimate 

 births and illegitimate births in any given city ; that 

 is, the numbers per million of the population are for 

 each phenomenon wonderfully constant. As regards 

 England, the ratio of the number of male suicides 

 to that of female is, over a long period, 3 or 4 to i ; 

 and that of male criminals to female, 4 or 5 to I. 



* Henry Morselli, "Suicide," Internal. Science Series, 1881. 



