SUICIDE IN DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES 197 



equally persistent cause. We are therefore justified in declaring 

 that the integration and cohesion of Catholicism, considered as 

 a society of idievers, is greater than the integration and cohesion 

 of Protestantism considered as such. 



It may be objected that, in some cases, the Jewish community 



Suicide-Rate in Diffebent Cotjntkies pee 1,000,000 Inhabitants of 



EACH EbLIGIOUS DENOMINATION. 



shows even less liability to suicide than the Catholic community. 

 But this " objection " falls to the ground of itself. Had we 

 contended that the theological basis of Catholicism is superior 

 to the theological basis of Judaism, this objection might cer- 

 tainly be raised ; but as we have not discussed principles which, 

 being extrasociological in their nature, do not come within the 

 scope of sociology, such an objection is necessarily valueless. 

 The integration of the Jewish community is a well-known fact ; 

 and this high degree of integration can be explained when we 

 come to consider the circumstances in which the Jewish com- 

 mimities in Europe are placed. From the earliest origins of 

 our Western civilisation up to the present day the Jews have 

 been treated as strangers, as outcasts, as enemies. They have 

 been, during many centuries, subjected to persecutions which 

 might reasonably have been expected to succeed in their object 

 of extirpating the Jewish race. And yet, in spite of the deadly 

 hostility of their environment, the Jews in Europe have sur- 



