CHAPTER X. 



i 



SUICIDE. 



SELF-DESTKUCTION is at least as common, and occurs under 

 as great a variety and under the same kind of circumstances 

 in other animals as in man. It may be divided into two 

 great categories, according as it is - 



1. Accidental, non-intentional; or 



2. Deliberate, intentional, the result of choice and consi- 

 deration, or of impulse. 



To the latter class alone, in which a determination to 

 destroy or sacrifice life is implied, the term suicide is usually 

 applied in man, though in man and other animals it is quite 

 proper and permissible also to speak of c accidental ' suicide. 



Suicide proper that which involves intention, and fre- 

 quently plan occurs in the lower animals under some of 

 the following circumstances : 



1. The animal is almost invariably old, and this cause 

 age may be said to be the most important of all the causes 

 of suicide in the lower animals, operating as it does in so 

 many different ways and in almost all cases, either directly 

 or indirectly. For it is age that leads to the sense of deca- 

 dence of an animal's powers, bodily and mental; to the 

 experience of man's cruelty; to a full knowledge of the 

 trials or troubles of life. The young, healthy animal, like 

 the human infant, is full of life, and its sense of the enjoy- 

 ment of mere existence is of the keenest. There is no serious 

 drawback to its pleasures ; it knows nothing of the rough 

 usage, of the persecution, peril, starvation, exposure 5 it may 

 have to encounter. 



2, The animal may suffer keenly from wounded feelings 



