In the preceding chapters we have detailed the history of many remarkable cases of self-destruction. It is melancholy to consider that the principle of life with which God has endowed us for high and noble purposes should have been sacrificed with that apparent coolness and self-possession which was manifested in many of the instances recorded in this work.
“How we abuse that article our life! Some people pluck it Out with a knife; some blow it up with powder; others duck it;— One thing is sure, and Horace Has already said it for us,— Sooner or later, all must kick the inevitable bucket.”
A gladiatorial contempt of death is becoming one of the most alarming features of the time; in this respect we appear ambitious to imitate the conduct of the French sophists, and seek, in acts of desperation, a notoriety that nothing else can give us. In investigating, as we have endeavoured to do, the motives that have led to this heinous offence, we have in many cases been unsuccessful in tracing the act to any definite principle. Either no reasons have been assigned or the accounts of the cases transmitted to us have been imperfect. These individuals stand apart from the rest of the world, and exhibit an anomaly in the last act of life totally irreconcilable to all acknowledged principles of reason and human action. Eccentric in their lives, they have been desirous of manifesting the ruling passion strong in death. This mental idiosyncracy may be, and no doubt often is, the result of original constitution, aided in its development by the moral atmosphere in which the person is placed, as well as by education and other circumstances which are known to influence the formation of the mind and character.
The singular facts adduced in this chapter are only brought forward as evidence of that anomalous condition of the mind referred to which leads to suicide; at the same time the instances will afford to the metaphysician valuable materials to assist him in his investigations into the philosophy of the human understanding. Some of the cases related, of course, admit of elucidation, but the majority will be found to puzzle the ingenuity even of those who pride themselves on their capacity of understanding what is beyond the ken of ordinary mortals.
