312 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



armor-bearer to hold his sword that he might plunge upon it ; 

 Samson, for the sake of being revenged upon his enemies, pulled 

 down the house in which they were reveling and "died with 

 them " ; and Judas Iscariot, after selling the Saviour for thirty- 

 pieces of silver, was overcome by remorse " and went and hanged 

 himself." The examples quoted from ancient history show that 

 the deed was the result of Stoic philosophy, and those from the 

 Bible show motives sufficient for the act, and in all must we dis- 

 card the theory of insanity. 



To come down to our own times, we may take, for example, the 

 case of Benjamin Hunter, the Camden murderer. For four or five 

 days before his execution he made a practice of sitting over the 

 prison register, with his legs covered by a blanket, and, under the 

 pretense that they were cold, kept rubbing them with his hands, 

 leading those who saw him to believe that he did so only for the 

 purpose of increasing their warmth by restoring the circulation 

 through them. Upon the night preceding the execution he man- 

 aged to secrete a basin in which he placed his feet, and after cut- 

 ting through the vessels with a piece of sharpened tin he com- 

 menced the process of rubbing, and was actually forcing out his 

 life with every movement when his appearance attracted the at- 

 tention of the keeper. His object had almost been gained, and, 

 under the circumstances, can we say that it was an insane one ? 

 He was a proud man, who dreaded the disgrace of a public execu- 

 tion ; he also possessed in a marked degree the desire to cheat the 

 law of its deserts, which is a characteristic tendency of the crimi- 

 nal mind ; in one constituted and situated as he was there were 

 sufficient reasons to account for the attempt, and, instead of its 

 being the act of a madman it was merely the effort of a deter- 

 mined will to accomplish a desired end. Cases innumerable might 

 be cited, did space permit, where persons of undoubted sanity 

 have committed suicide for the purpose of escaping suffering, 

 punishment, or disgrace. In fact, a great many of the suicides of 

 which we daily read, probably the majority, can not be considered 

 due to cerebral disease, but must be looked upon rather as the 

 result of social laws, combined with false training and education. 

 " Is suicide ever justifiable ? " is another mooted question, and 

 many writers have answered it in the affirmative. Epictetus, 

 Zeno, Pliny, Seneca, and Plutarch were its advocates. Hume, in 

 his " Essay on Suicide," says : " It would be no crime for me to 

 divert the Nile or Danube from its course if I could ; where, then, 

 is the crime of turning a few ounces of blood out of its natural 

 channels ? " Rousseau taught, " To seek one's own good and avoid 

 one's own harm in that which hurts not another, is the law of 

 Nature." Budgel believed that, "when life becomes uneasy to 

 support, and is overwhelmed with clouds and sorrows, man has a 



