caress, to _touch_ her, seemed the involuntarily natural expression of
any feeling toward her. Something in the bright, tendril-curling hair,
the curve of her young cheek, the curve of her red lips, her light, yet
round form, with its confiding, unconscious movements, made as
inevitable an allure as the soft rosiness of a darling child, with
always the suggestion of that illusive spirit that dared, and retreated,
ever giving, ere it veiled itself, the promise of some lovelier glimpse
to come.
The water had stopped running, and Dosia straightened herself. She
raised her head, to meet his eyes upon her. What was in them? The color
flamed in her face and left her white, although in a second there was
nothing more to see in his but a deep and guarded gentleness as he came
toward her with the pitcher.
"I'll take it now, please," she said hurriedly.
"Won't you let me carry it up for you?"
"Thank you, it isn't necessary. I'll go along, if you'll wait and turn
out the light."
"Very well. You're sure it's not too heavy for you?" he asked anxiously,
as her wrists bent a little with the weight.
"Oh, no, indeed," said Dosia quickly, turning to go. At that moment the
white cat, jumping down from the table in front of her, rubbed itself
against her skirts, and she stumbled slightly.
"Take care!" cried Girard, grasping the shaking pitcher over her slight
hold of it.
Their hands touched--for the first time since the night of disaster, the
night of her trust and his protection. The next instant there was a
crash; the fragments of the jug lay upon the kitchen floor, the water
streaming over it in rivulets.
"Dosia!" called the frightened voice of Lois from above.
"Yes, I'm coming," Dosia called back. "There's nothing the matter!" She
had run from the room without looking up at that figure beside her,
snatching a glass of water automatically from the dining-table as she
passed by it. Fast as her feet might carry her, they could not keep pace
with her beating heart.
When the telephone-bell rang a moment after, it was to confirm the
tidings given before. Justin was in Chicago.
TO BE CONCLUDED
[Illustration]
THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE
BY GEORGE KENNAN
Few branches of sociological investigation have more practical
importance, or present a greater number of problems, difficulties, and
interesting speculative questions, than the branch that deals with the
complex, varied, and often inexplicable phenomena of suicide. When we
consider the fact that more than ten thousand persons take their own
lives in the United States every year, that more than seventy thousand
die annually by their own hands in Europe, and that the suicide rate is
constantly and rapidly increasing throughout the greater part of the
civilized world, we are forced to admit that, from the view-point of
vital economy at least, the subject is one of the utmost gravity. In
1881 the annual suicide rate of the United States was only 12 per
million of the population, and our total number of suicides was only
605; last year our suicide rate had risen to 126 per million, and our
suicides numbered 10,782. If the present rate of increase be maintained,
we shall lose by suicide, in the next five years, nearly as many lives
as were lost by the Union armies in battle in the five years of the
Civil War. We are already losing annually from this cause more men than
were killed on the Union side in the three great battles of Gettysburg,
Spottsylvania, and the Wilderness taken together.
Statisticians have estimated that, in the world as a whole, there is a
suicide every three minutes, and we know, with an approximation to
certainty, that there is a suicide every six minutes and a half in
Europe and the United States alone. Suicide has cost France 274,000
lives since 1871, Germany 158,000 since 1893, and the United States
120,000 since 1890. I need hardly point out the practical importance of
the questions that present themselves in connection with this abnormal
and apparently unnecessary waste of human life. Among such questions
are: Upon what general and world-wide conditions does suicide depend?
Are any of its causes removable? What are the reasons for the steady and
progressive increase of self-destruction in civilized countries? Is
suicide controlled or affected by any natural laws, and, if so, by what
laws? These are all questions of practical importance, because upon the
answers to them depends the possibility of economizing human life and
increasing the sum total of human happiness. But the subject is one of
deep interest, entirely apart from its practical importance.
_Psychological Problems of Suicide_
In some of its aspects, suicide raises psychological questions which
bristle with difficulties, but which, nevertheless, pique the curiosity
and demand explanatory answers. Why, for example, is the rate of suicide
strictly dependent everywhere upon season and weather? Why is the
tendency to self-destruction lessened by war? What is the explanation of
suicide in the face of impending death, when there is still a fair
chance of escape, or when the natural death that is threatened would
involve less suffering than the act of self-destruction? What is the
mental state of the hundreds of persons who kill themselves every year
upon what would seem to be absurdly inadequate provocation--of the man,
for example, who commits suicide because his wife declines to get out
his clean underclothes, or the woman who takes poison because she has
received a comic valentine? In its religious aspect, why is the tendency
to suicide greatest among Protestant Christians and least among
Mohammedans and Jews? In its racial aspect, why is the suicide rate of
Japan eight times that of Portugal, and the rate of American whites
eight or ten times that of full-blooded American blacks? Why do the
Slavs of Bohemia kill themselves at the rate of 158 per million, while
the Slavs of Russia commit suicide at the rate of only 31 per million?
Why do emigrants, going to a new country, carry their national suicide
rates with them, and maintain such rates, with little or no alteration,
long after their environment has completely changed? These questions may
not have great practical importance, but, from the view-point of the
psychologist and the sociologist, they are full of speculative interest.
When we study the phenomena of suicide as they appear in the light of
statistics, we are struck by the fact that among the general and
world-wide conditions that limit or control the suicidal impulse are
weather and war. Other factors, such as education, religion, or economic
status, may seem to be more influential, if observation be limited to a
single nation or a single continent; but if a comprehensive survey be
made of the whole world, weather and war will be seen to take a
prominent place among the few agencies that affect uniformly the
suicidal tendency.
As soon as accurate and trustworthy statistics of self-destruction
became available in Europe, sociologists began to study the question
whether suicide is controlled or regulated in any way by natural laws,
and, if so, whether cosmical causes, such as climate, temperature,
season, and weather, have any perceptible influence upon the suicide
rate. It was soon discovered that the tendency to self-destruction is
greatest in the zone lying between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth
parallels of north latitude. South of forty-three degrees the annual
suicide rate is only 21 per million, and north of fifty-five degrees it
is only 88 per million; but between the parallels of forty-three and
fifty it rises to 93 per million, and between fifty and fifty-five it
reaches its maximum of 172 per million. The suicide belt, therefore,
lies in the north temperate zone, where the climate is most favorable to
human development and happiness. This fact, however, does not prove that
a moderate and equable climate predisposes to suicide. Things may
coexist without being in any way related to each other, and the
frequency of suicide in the north temperate zone may be due wholly to
the fact that the zone in question is the home of the most cultivated
races and the seat of the highest and most complicated civilization. In
this zone the struggle for life is fiercest, the interference with
natural laws is most extensive, and the physical and emotional wear and
tear of the economic contest is most acutely felt. It is more than
probable, therefore, that the high rate of suicide in the north
temperate zone is due to the civilization, rather than to the climate,
of that region. This phase of the subject need not be discussed at
length, because all competent authorities agree that climate, in its
relation to suicide, is not a controlling or determining factor.
A very different state of affairs appears, however, when we bring the
suicide rate into correlation with season and weather. Long ago, before
accurate statistics made a scientific investigation of the subject
possible, there was a widely prevalent popular belief that dark and
dismal months of the year, and gloomy, rainy, or uncomfortable weather,
predisposed mankind to self-destruction, and that the suicide rate was
highest in November or December, and lowest in spring or early summer.
_Spring and Summer the Suicide Seasons_
The French philosopher Montesquieu went so far as to explain the
supposed frequency of suicide in London by connecting it with English
rains and fogs. It was only natural, he argued, that unhappy people
should kill themselves in a country where the autumnal and winter months
were so dark, and where there was so much gloomy, depressing weather.
When, however, investigators began to study the subject in the light of
accurate statistics, when they grouped suicides by months and compared
one month with another, they were surprised to find that the tendency to
suicide was greatest, not in the gloomy and depressing months of
November and December, but in the bright and cheerful month of June. In
1898 Dr. Oscar Geck, of Strasburg, published statistics of about 100,000
suicides that took place in Prussia in the twenty-year period between
1876 and 1896. They showed that, so far at least as Prussia was
concerned, suicides invariably attained their maximum in June and their
minimum in December. There was a constant rise in the suicide curve from
January to the end of June, and a constant decline from June to the end
of the first winter month.
Durkheim, of Paris, and Dr. Gubski, of St. Petersburg, who are among the
most recent investigators of the subject, assert that, so far as the
seasonal distribution of suicides is concerned, the figures for Prussia
hold good throughout Europe. June is everywhere the suicide month, and
December is everywhere the month in which self-destruction is least
frequent. Durkheim gives tabulated statistics for seven of the principal
countries of Europe, which show conclusively that, in point of
predisposing tendency to suicide, the four seasons stand in the
following order: summer first, spring second, autumn third, and winter
last.[17] Even in Russia, which differs most from the rest of Europe in
ethnology and economic status, the seasonal distribution of suicides is
the same. Dr. Gubski's statistics show that of every thousand Russian
suicides, 328 take place in summer, 272 in spring, 215 in autumn, and
185 in winter. If we divide the year into halves, and group the suicides
in semi-annual periods, we find that 600 occur in the pleasant spring
and summer months and only 400 in the gloomy months of winter and fall.
A study of American statistics brings us to almost exactly the same
result. In September, 1895, Dr. Forbes Winslow, of New York, read a
paper before the medico-legal congress which was then in session in that
city upon the subject of "Suicide as a Mental Epidemic." The statistics
which he submitted showed that in the United States, as in Europe,
suicide reaches its maximum in June and falls to its minimum in
December. The average annual number of American suicides in June is 336
and in December 217. If we divide the year into halves and compare the
figures of the semi-annual periods with those of Russia, the
correspondence is almost startling.
Notwithstanding the immense difference between the population of Russia
and that of the United States, in environment, in education, in
religion, in inherited character, in temperament, and in civilization
generally, the mysterious law that controls the seasonal distribution of
suicides operates in America exactly as it operates in the great empire
of the Slavs. In Russia, out of every thousand suicides, the number who
kill themselves in the fall-and-winter half of the year is precisely
400; in America it is 386. In Russia, the proportion per thousand in the
spring-and-summer half of the year is 600; in America it is 614. There
is a slightly greater tendency to spring-and-summer suicide in the
United States than in Russia, but the variation is only a little more
than one per cent., and taking into consideration the great difference
between the oppressed and ignorant peasants of Russia, and the free,
well-educated citizens of our own country, the practical identity of
their seasonal suicide rates seems to me a most extraordinary social and
psychological fact.
This, however, is by no means a complete statement of the problem
involved in the seasonal distribution of suicides. Spring and summer are
the suicide seasons, not only among the closely related nationalities of
Europe and the United States, but among the ethnologically alien peoples
of the Far East. The reports of the Statistical Bureau of Japan show
that between 1899 and 1903 the average annual number of suicides was
8,840. They were distributed through the year as follows: winter 1,711,
spring 2,475, summer 2,703, fall 1,951. If we divide the year into
halves, we find that 59 per cent. of the Japanese suicides occur in the
spring and summer months and only 41 per cent. in the months of fall and
winter. This corresponds almost exactly with the annual distribution of
suicides in the United States, in Russia, and in Europe as a whole. The
seasonal percentages may be shown in tabular form as follows:[18]
United
States Russia Europe Japan
per cent. per cent. per cent. per cent.
Spring and summer 61 60 59 59
Fall and winter 39 40 41 41
It thus appears that the tendency of mankind to commit suicide in spring
and summer, rather than in fall and winter, is quite as strongly marked
in Japan as it is in Europe and America. Despite all differences of
character and environment, the suicidal impulses of Yankee, muzhik, and
coolie are governed by the same law.
_Suicide Weather_
The evidence above set forth, and much more for which I cannot here find
space, seems conclusively to establish the fact that, throughout the
civilized world, the pleasantest seasons of the year are most conducive
to suicide. The question then arises, Does this rule hold good if
applied to the pleasantest days of the pleasantest seasons? In other
words, is the tendency to suicide greater on clear, dry, and sunny days
in June than on dark, cloudy, and rainy days in June? Professor Edwin G.
Dexter, of the University of Illinois, published in the _Popular Science
Monthly_, in April, 1901, a long and interesting paper entitled "Suicide
and the Weather," in which he gave the result of a comparison between
the police records of 1,962 cases of suicide in the city of New York and
the records of the New York Weather Bureau for all the days on which
these suicides occurred. His comparisons and computations, which seem to
have been made with great thoroughness and care, show not only that the
tendency to suicide is greatest in the spring and summer months, but
that it is most marked on the clearest, sunniest, and pleasantest days
of those months. To state his conclusions in his own words: "The clear,
dry days show the greatest number of suicides, and the wet, partly
cloudy days the least; and with differences too great to be attributed
to accident or chance. In fact, there are thirty-one per cent. more
suicides on dry than on wet days, and twenty-one per cent. more on clear
days than on days that are partly cloudy."
It thus appears that, as a rule, the tendency to suicide, throughout the
civilized world, is greatest in the pleasantest seasons of the year;
that it is everywhere greatest in the pleasantest month of the
pleasantest season; and that in New York City it is greatest on the
clearest and sunniest days of the pleasantest month. From the point of
view of science, therefore, it is perfectly reasonable and absolutely
accurate to say on a beautiful, sunny day in early June, "This is
regular suicide weather."
Now, what is the explanation of this world-wide tendency to
self-destruction in the seasons, months, and days when life would seem
to be best worth living? The cause, whatever it be, can have no
connection with race, religion, history, political status, or
geographical location, because it acts uniformly among peoples as widely
different, in all these respects, as the Russians, the Italians, the
Americans, and the Japanese. It is evidently a cosmic cause, but what is
its nature?
Some investigators have suggested that the suicidal tendency is
dependent on heat; but June is not the hottest month, nor is December
the coldest. Durkheim has tested this conjecture by comparing
temperatures with suicides in France, Italy, and Prussia. He finds that,
in all three of these countries, suicides reach their maximum in June
and their minimum in December, while the temperature does not rise to
its maximum until July and does not fall to its minimum until
January.[19] Moreover, if heat were a predisposing cause of suicide, we
should find the suicide rate of Europeans much higher in the tropics
than it is in the north temperate zone; but such is not the case. Heat,
therefore, as a possible cause, must be eliminated. Other writers,
including Dr. Gubski, have called attention to the very close relation
between suicide and light. It is true that daylight, if measured by
hours, has its minimum in December and its maximum in June, in precise
correspondence with the seasonal rates of suicide; but what about the
equinoctial periods of March and September?
If light be the efficient cause, the tendency to suicide should be as
great at the time of the fall equinox as it is at the time of the spring
equinox; but this is not the case. Two hundred and seventy-two suicides
out of every thousand occur in the vernal equinoctial period and only
two hundred and fifteen in the autumnal equinoctial period, and this
proportion holds good throughout the whole northern hemisphere. Light,
therefore, must also be eliminated.
Morselli suggests that suicide is influenced by the first heat of early
spring and summer, which "seizes upon the organism not yet acclimated
and still under the influence of the cold season." But is there any such
thing as winter debility, and, if so, why should it last until June?
Many physicians, on the other hand, assert that during the period of
early summer the organism, instead of being debilitated, is working at a
high tension, that every function of mind and body is then more active
than at any other period of the year, and, that, consequently, there is
then greater liability to sudden mental and physical collapse. But there
is no evidence to show that suicides, generally, are caused by seasonal
overtension and subsequent collapse.
Goldwin Smith thinks that with the revival of vitality in the spring and
early summer "all feelings and impressions become more lively," those
that impel to suicide among the rest. But if all the feelings "become
more lively," why do not the stimulated sensations of joy and pleasure
on a beautiful day in June overcome, or at least evenly balance, the
stimulated sensations of suffering and unhappiness?
_Influence of Environment on Self-Destruction_
None of these explanations is at all satisfactory, and it seems to me
that the solution of the problem is to be found, not in the mere
physical action of light, heat, or weather on the human body, but in the
influence of the whole environment on the human mind. Sir Arthur Helps
was the first, so far as I know, to suggest that the increased tendency
to suicide in spring and summer is due to a psychological rather than a
physical cause. Speaking, in "Realmah," of the fact that suicides are
more frequent on pleasant days than on unpleasant ones, he says:
"Perhaps it is because, on these beautiful days, the higher powers seem
to be more beneficent; and the wretch overladen with misery thinks that
he can trust more to their mercy."
This explanation is little more satisfactory than the others; but it
does, nevertheless, recognize and take into account the influence of the
environment on a preexisting emotional state. It errs only in
interpretation. The smiling, happy, joyous aspect of Nature in June does
not inspire the unhappy man with confidence in the beneficence and mercy
of the higher powers. On the contrary, it shows him that the higher
powers pay no attention at all to his feelings and have no sympathy
whatever with his grief. The blue skies, sunshine, leafy trees, and
singing birds, which make up the environment of June, add to the
happiness of the man who is happy already, but they intensify, by
contrast, the misery of the man who is already miserable. In November
and December, when all is dark, bare, and cheerless, Nature seems to be
in sympathy with the unhappy man's mood, and from that voiceless,
pitying sympathy of the great World-Mother he derives a certain
sustaining comfort and consolation. In June his mood is the same, but
the mood of Nature has changed. The great World-Mother no longer
sympathizes with his grief, but laughs him to scorn with her sunshine,
her blossoming flowers, her leafy trees, and her jubilation of mating
birds. He looks about him and thinks: "Everybody is happy, everything is
rejoicing. I am the solitary exception; I am the only living thing that
is out of place." And then there comes upon him a heartbreaking sense of
loneliness, a feeling of complete isolation, as if the great, happy
world had cast him off and gone on its way singing. He has thought of
suicide before--he has thought of it often; and now, when the world, in
its triumphant gladness, ignores his very existence, when there is no
longer sympathy, nor pity, nor any further hope of a share in the
happiness that he sees about him, it seems to him that the time for
self-destruction has come. Whether he be a Russian, an American, or a
Japanese, he can observe and he can feel: and when he sees that the
whole world is jubilant, while he himself is wretched, he becomes more
acutely conscious than ever before of his loneliness and misery, and
resolves to give up the struggle and get out of the way of the world's
laughing, singing, summer-carnival procession. He ends his life; and in
some Russian, American, or Japanese table of statistics his death adds
one more to the suicides in June.[20]
The close relation that exists between suicide and war was first brought
to my attention by the sudden and remarkable decrease of suicide in the
United States in 1898, the year of the war with Spain. Instead of
increasing that year, as it had every previous year for more than a
decade, the number of suicides decreased suddenly from 6,600 to 5,920, a
falling off of 680 cases. Then, when the war in the Philippines followed
the war in Cuba, the number was again reduced by 580 cases. When,
however, in 1900, we began to lose interest in the Philippines and to
think of our own home troubles and trials, the number of suicides rose
suddenly from 5,340 to 7,245, an increase of 1,905 cases in two years.
The decrease in the suicide rate during the war was nearly 16 per cent.,
and the increase after the war about 23 per cent.
_War As a Deterrent to Suicide_