406 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



surer, what laarbour can be calmer or more protected against the 

 fury of the ocean storms than death ? Suicide is thus the 

 logical termination of a life of disappointments, unsupported by 

 a higher and supra-individual force. And, assuredly, it is not 

 for us to cast a stone at the tired traveller who does but seek a 

 rest from the storms of the violence of which, perhaps, only he 

 alone is fully aware ! Our task is not here a moral, but a scientific 

 one. Suicide is a social phenomenon which obeys certain laws ; 

 and it is the duty of the sociologist to investigate these laws 

 with a view to curing the disease. 



But if the individual be not one of the vanquished in life's 

 conflict — in life's unequal conflict — the result may be the same. 

 The successful individual has raised himself to a material situa- 

 tion formerly unknown to him ; he has now the power to gratify 

 desires which formerly may have seemed to him senseless Utopias. 

 But, once again, he has raised himself by his own power ; he is 

 consequently accustomed to consider that individual power 

 sufficient to satisfy all his wants ; he is accustomed, more than 

 ever, to prize the doctrine of individuaUsm, because he sees 

 in his own individual strength the source of all his increased 

 power. But it is not long before he is disillusioned. In pro- 

 portion as his desires are gratified, new desires arise. As we said 

 in the previous chapter, if the individual contains within his 

 own constitution the principle of insatiability, he does not contain 

 within himself the principle which can afford satisfaction amid 

 this everlasting Drang ; and at last, realising this fact, the suc- 

 cessful individual realises that every unfulfilled desire involves 

 a state of positive suffering, and, as his ultimate desires must 

 always remain unfulfilled, his suffering knows no end. He is 

 not held back by any link which binds him to society at large, 

 by any link of communion with his fellow-men ; his life appears 

 to him empty, his efforts seem but vain. Here again is suicide 

 the logical termination of a life which is uncontrolled by any 

 supra-individual ideal. For the successful individual, as well 



