136 SUICIDE. 



Those who believe that the lower animals do not and 

 cannot commit suicide simply because they are lower animals 

 who consider suicide one of the distinctive privileges of 

 man endeavour to explain away, in such instances of self- 

 destruction as have just been given, all the ordinary motives 

 for suicide as they occur in man. They regard all such in- 

 cidents as cases simply of ' accidental ' death. When a dog 

 deliberately enters a river, the sea, a pond or lake, submerges 

 itself, and is drowned, we are told that it may have had a 

 ' fit,' epileptic or apoplectic. Thus even Dr. Wynter, who 

 must have been well acquainted with the psychology of sui- 

 cide in man, suggests, in regard to the before-mentioned 

 case of the Havannah dog : ' It is more than possible that 

 the dog had some head disease which terminated in apo- 

 plexy, and the suicide was only a fancy of the proprietor's.' 

 Such an explanation is much more improbable, however, 

 than that deliberate suicide was committed ; so improbable, 

 indeed, that it cannot be seriously entertained. The sup- 

 position of accidental death from fits of any kind does not 

 satisfactorily account for the whole series of phenomena 

 those which precede or lead to, as well as those that accom- 

 pany, the suicidal attempt. 



In the case of the Newfoundland dog that died in a 

 ditch it is suggested that he may have lain down there to 

 die of ' broken heart.' 



Moreover, various of the lower animals commit murder 

 from the same sort of motives, and with the same kind of 

 premeditation and preparation, that man exhibits, including 

 the patient waiting for favourable opportunity and the devis- 

 ing of appropriate means. They murder not only each other, 

 but man, from revenge or other obvious motives. We are 

 told, for instance, of the attempted murder by drowning of a 

 bulldog by a Newfoundland one. The latter seized the for- 

 mer, jumped with it into the sea, for a time c succeeded in 

 resolutely keeping the bulldog's head under water,' and the 

 latter would infallibly have been drowned had it not been 

 rescued by man. 



A swan was more successful in executing its purpose, 

 seizing by the neck and drowning by submergence a dog that 



